484 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. Chap. XXXV. 
Having kept along the rising ground, and passed 
several little hamlets adorned with monkey-bread 
trees, we had to cross very difficult swampy ground, 
which, a little later in the season, must be avoided 
by a long circuit. Two months later Mount Bagele 
must look almost like an island, so surrounded is it 
on all sides by deep inlets and swamps. The de- 
tached cone of Mount Takabello, rising to a height 
of about a thousand feet above the plain, for some 
time formed a conspicuous object in front of us on our 
winding path, till at length, a little before noon, we 
reached the outskirts of the capital in a state of mind 
not exempt from anxious feeling. 
