420 SCARCITY OF ANIMALS. 



it for meal ; no matter how small the pieces offered were, 

 it gave them pleasure to deal. 



The landscape around is green, with a tint of yellow, 

 the grass long, the paths about a foot wide, and generally- 

 worn deeply in the middle. The tall, overhanging grass, 

 when brushed against by the feet and legs, disturbed the 

 lizards and mice, and occasionally a serpent, causing a 

 rustling among the herbage. There are not many birds ; 

 every animal is entrapped and eaten. Gins are seen on 

 both sides of the path every ten or fifteen yards, for miles 

 together. The time and labour required to dig up moles 

 and mice from their burrows would, if applied to culti- 

 vation, afford food for any amount of fowls or swine, but 

 the latter are seldom met with. 



We passed on through forests abounding in climbing- 

 plants, many of which are so extremely tough, that a man 

 is required to go in front with a hatchet ; and when the 

 burdens of the carriers are caught, they are obliged to 

 cut the climbers with their teeth, for no amount of tugging 

 will make them break. The paths in all these forests are 

 so zigzag, that a person may imagine he has travelled a 

 distance of thirty miles, which, when reckoned as the 

 crow flies, may not be fifteen. 



We reached the river Moamba (lat. 9 38' S., long. 20 

 13' 34" B.) on the 7th May. This is a stream of thirty 

 yards wide, and, like the Quilo, Loange, Chikapa, and 

 Loajima, contains both alligators and hippopotami. We 

 crossed it by means of canoes. Here, as on the slopes 

 down to the Quilo and Chikapa, we had an opportumty 

 of viewing the geological structure of the country, — a 

 capping of ferruginous conglomerate, which in many 

 parts looks as if it had been melted, for the rounded 

 nodules resemble masses of slag, and they have a smooth 

 scale on the surface ; but in all probability it is an aqueous 

 deposit, for it contains water- worn pebbles of all sorts, and 

 generally small. Below this mass hes a pale-red hardened 

 sandstone, and beneath that, a trap-like whin-stone. 

 Lowest of all hes a coarse-grained sandstone containing a 

 few pebbles, and in connection with it, a white calcareous 

 rock is occasionally met with, and so are banks of loose 

 round quartz pebbles. The slopes are longer from the 

 level country above, the further we go eastward, and 

 everywhere we meet with circumscribed bogs on them, 

 surrounded by clumps of straight, lofty, evergreen trees, 



