1G2 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



well wooded with various greens. Dull mangrove, dis- 

 mal jungle, and monotonous grass, were supplanted by 

 tall solitary trees, amongst which the lofty tamarind 

 rose conspicuously graceful, and a card-table-like 

 swamp, cut by a network of streams, nullahs, and stag- 

 nant pools, gave way to dry healthy slopes, with short 

 steep pitches, and gently shelving hills. The beams of 

 the large sun of the equator — and nowhere have I seen 

 the rulers of night and day so large — danced gaily upon 

 blocks and pebbles of red, yellow, and dazzling snowy 

 quartz, and the bright sea-breeze waved the summits 

 of the trees, from which depended graceful llianas, and 

 wood-apples large as melons, whilst creepers, like vine 

 tendrils, rising from large bulbs of brown-grey wood, 

 clung closely to their stalwart trunks. Monkeys played at 

 hide-and-seek, chattering behind the bolls, as the iguana, 

 with its painted scale-armour, issued forth to bask upon 

 the sunny bank ; white-breasted ravens cawed when dis- 

 turbed from their perching- places ; doves cooed on the 

 well-clothed boughs, and hawks soared high in the trans- 

 parent sky. The field-cricket chirped like the Italian 

 cigala in the shady bush, and everywhere, from air, 

 from earth, from the hill slopes above, and from the 

 marshes below, the hum, the buzz, and the loud con- 

 tinuous voice of insect life, through the length of the 

 day, spoke out its natural joy. Our gipsy encamp- 

 ment lay 



" By shallow rivers, to whose falls 

 Melodious birds sing madrigals." 



By night, the soothing murmurs of the stream at the 

 hill's base rose mingled with the faint rustling of the 

 breeze, which at times broken by the scream of the night- 

 heron, the bellow of the bull-frog in his swampy home, the 

 cynhy sena's whimper, and the fox's whining bark, sounded 



