190 



THE MARCH. 



small, beady eyes twinkling at the practical joke, 

 they bade us adieu. Though starving, they would 

 not work ! A few hours af terw^ards they fell in 

 with the hippopotamus, for which they were wait- 

 ing, as it passed from the feeding- grounds to its 

 day-home in the stream. Behemoth is a helpless 

 beast on dry land. He was presently surrounded 

 by his enemies, porcupined with arrows, and soon 

 nothing of him remained but a heap of bones 

 and a broad stain of blood. 



We rested till 3.15 p.m. in the grateful shade, 

 and then, persuading our carriers to load one 

 another, an operation still of some difficulty, we 

 advanced over a path dented by the spoor of wild 

 cattle. The rolling ground was a straggHng thorn- 

 jungle, a 'forest without shade,' studded with 

 bright blossoms : the usual black-jacks were scat- 

 tered about a plain, fired to promote the growth 

 of fodder, and ant-hills rose regularly like Irish 

 ' fairy-mounts,' as if disposed by the hand of art. 

 Needless to say that all was desert of man. The 

 Khombora Cone fell far behind: the walls of 

 Usagama, whose peaks, smoking by day and burn- 

 ing by night, resembled fumaroles from afar, 

 changed their blue tints first for brown and then 

 for a distinct green hue. At length, emerging 

 from the wood, we debouched upon an alluvial 



