1866.] AFRICAN PIONEERS. 21 



the names of those ensealed. The tall men became exhausted 

 soonest, while the shorter men worked vigorously still — 

 but a couple of days' hard work seemed to tell on the best 

 of them. It is doubtful if any but meat-eating people can 

 stand long-continued labour without exhaustion : the Chinese 

 may be an exception. When French navvies were first 

 employed they could not do a tithe of the work of our 

 English ones ; but when the French were fed in the same 

 style as the English, they performed equally well. Here 

 the Makonde have rarely the chance of a good feed of meat : 

 it is only when one of them is fortunate enough to spear a 

 wild hog or an antelope that they know this luxury ; if a fowl 

 is eaten they get but a taste of it with their porridge. 



13t7i April. — We now began to descend the northern slope 

 down to the Eovuma, and a glimpse could occasionally be 

 had of the country ; it seemed covered with great masses 

 of dark green forest, but the undulations occasionally looked 

 like hills, and here and there a Sterculia had put on yellow- 

 foliage in anticipation of the coming winter. More fre- 

 quently our vision was circumscribed to a few yards till 

 our merry woodcutters made for us the pleasant scene of a 

 long vista fit for camels to pass : as a whole, the jungle 

 would have made the authors of the natty little hints to 

 travellers smile at their own productions, good enough, 

 perhaps, where one has an open country with trees and hills, 

 by which to take bearings, estimate distances, see that 

 one point is on the same latitude, another on the same 

 longitude with such another, and all to be laid down fair 

 and square with protractor and compass, but so long as we 

 remained within the vegetation, that is fed by the moisture 

 from the Indian Ocean, the steamy, smothering air, and 

 dank, rank, luxuriant vegetation made me feel, like it, 

 struggling for existence, — and no more capable of taking 

 bearings than if I had been in a hogshead and observing 

 through the bumrhole ! 



