LOVELY SCENERY. 



183 



purest azure, flaked with fleecy opal-tinted vapours 

 floating high in the empyrean, and catching the first 

 roseate smiles of the unrisen sun. Long lines, one 

 bluer than the other, broken by castellated crags and 

 towers of most picturesque form, girdled the far hori- 

 zon ; the nearer heights were of a purplish-brown, and 

 snowy mists hung like glaciers about their folds. The 

 plain was a park in autumn, burnt tawny by the sun, 

 patched with a darker hue where the people were firing 

 the grass — a party was at work merrily, as if pre- 

 paring for an English harvest-home — to start the ani- 

 mals, to promote the growth of a young crop, and, such 

 is the popular belief, to attract rain. Calabashes, Palmy- 

 ras, Tamarinds, and clumps of evergreen trees were scat- 

 tered over the scene, each stretching its lordly arms over 

 subject circlets of deep dew-fed verdure. Here the dove 

 cooed loudly, and the guinea-fowl rang its wild cry, 

 whilst the peewit chattered in the open stubble, and a 

 little martin, the prettiest of its kind, contrasted by its 

 nimble dartings along the ground with the condor 

 wheeling slowly through the upper air. The most 

 graceful of animals, the zebra and the antelope, browsed 

 in the distance : now they stood to gaze upon the long 

 line of porters, then, after leisurely pacing, with retro- 

 spective glances, in an opposite direction, they halted 

 motionless for a moment, faced about once more to 

 satiate curiosity, and lastly, terrified by their own 

 fancy, they bounded in ricochets over the plain. 



About noon the fair scene vanished as if by enchant- 

 ment. We suddenly turned northwards into a tangled 

 mass of tall fetid reeds, rank jungle and forest, with its 

 decaying trunks encroaching upon the hole-pierced goat- 

 track that zigzaged towards the Myombo Eiver. This 

 perennial stream rises, according to the guides, in an 



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