Nature find Art, July 1, I860.] 
THE HONEY HUNTERS. 
39 
as a pastime while breakfast was in course of pre- 
paration. A short distance from camp I discovered 
a whole colony of “pin tailed ducks,” which had 
evidently chosen these pleasant streams and water- 
meadows for a breeding-place, and were completing 
their arrangements accordingly. Some were diving 
about in the pools; others, with snake-like neck, 
forced their way through the water-plants and 
feathery reeds. The small dusky water- rails, too, 
sculled restlessly to and fro amongst their larger 
neighbours, until some ill-disposed, tyrannical old 
drake, with outstretched neck and open beak, would 
make a sudden dash amongst the busy throng, 
sending them plunging and flapping off for shelter 
amongst the flags and rushes. 
Our line of march that morning still lay through 
“ boulder land,” amid wild vines hanging in festoons 
from every branch and tree-trunk, and trailing 
their length like cables. A short ride brought us 
to the village of Simeis. Many of the Tartar huts 
are built against the hillside by simply digging a 
deep notch, so to speak, in the bank, fixing a flat 
roof composed of poles, brushwood, and turf, like 
a platform, level with the ground above, and build- 
ing up the front with a sort of “ wattle and dab” 
wall. The roofs project far beyond the walls, so 
as to form a sort of verandah, and those at Simeis 
were in most instances covered with a luxuriant 
crop of grass, on which the goats were contentedly 
feeding, yet, as it seemed to me, in peril of tumbling 
head-over-heels down the chimneys, which were 
mere open holes. A benighted traveller, stumbling 
about in such a spot, would stand an excellent 
chance of dropping down into some family circle in 
a manner more unceremonious than agreeable. The 
greater portion of these huts were literally em- 
bowered in fruit-trees, and their gardens overrun 
with the trailing stems and tendrils of gourds and 
other members of the pumpkin family. I saw r in 
many of them a curious and ingenious method of 
providing habitations for the bees, which appeared 
exceedingly numerous. A number of short pieces 
of log, thirteen or fourteen inches in circumference, 
are hollowed out until little more than the bark 
remains. The ends are then stopped up with clay, 
leaving a hole for the entrance and exit of the busy 
swarm; and I presume that these logs are separately 
removed as their contents are required for use. 
We saw mills of the most Lilliputian proportions, 
erected where the numerous rivulets afforded the 
requisite power, their tiny wheels splashing lazily 
round, whilst the wooden hammers they were con 
structed to work thumped away monotonously on 
the coarse Tartar cloth in the course of manu- 
facture. 
Many of the natives of these villages were about 
as unprepossessing specimens of humanity as one 
could well meet in a long day’s march through the 
[ Tartar country, and that is saying a great deal. 
| Their liglit-reddish hair (a most uncommon colour 
in Grim Tartary), coupled with their long, grotesque 
faces and heads, struck me as most remarkable. 
Pallas says, concerning these satyr-like people, that 
“ the ancient Genoese (their ancestors) were in the 
habit of compressing the heads of the newly-born 
infants about the temples, with a view to rendering 
them unusually flat ; a custom which they appear 
to have adopted from their predecessors, the Moors.” 
This habit is also common, even at the present 
time, amongst certain Indian tribes inhabiting 
British Columbia. It is somewhat curious in an 
ethnological point of view that the practice should 
have prevailed among races so distant and distinct, 
and from such an early period of history ; and, 
although the Tartars appear to have long discon- 
tinued it, they still inherit the grotesque expression 
and contour of face and head enjoyed by their- fore- 
fathers. Still onward we pass through the land 
of boulders, every here and there catching glimpses 
of the sea, and from time to time turning oft' the 
path in pursuit of birds, or with hammer and chisel 
attacking fallen fragments of rock, or with toma- 
hawk splitting off sheets of dry bark and flakes of 
decayed wood that seemed likely to conceal some 
secretive, burrowing beetle or its plump larvae. 
We are now rapidly approaching the “Palace of 
Aloupka” and its exquisitely beautiful pleasure- 
grounds, for a description of which, and of the 
torch-light fishing we witnessed on the sand-spits 
near “Yalta,” we must refer our readers to our next. 
THE HONEY HUNTERS, OF THE SAPATANE OR WANKIE’S TRIBE, 
NEAR LOGIER HILL, ZAMBEZIE RIVER. 
Latitude 1 8° 45' 8" $., and 60 or 80 miles below the Victoria Falls. 
By T. Baines, F.R.G.S. 
the insect queen, receiving the constant homage of 
her devoted subjects, is exhibited to the gaze of ad- 
miring visitors. The little busy bee of South 
Africa and Australia, though equally industrious, 
is less civilized than his European congener. The 
hollow of a decayed tree ; the crevice of a rock ; 
or sometimes even the cavity of a deserted ant-hill, 
broken and sacked by the Aardvark, or Cape ant- 
YYTHEY we contemplate the honey-making insect 
« f of the southern hemisphere, all ideas of 
neatly constructed “bee skeps,” tastefully arranged 
in pleasant gardens, which have become almost a 
necessity to the domesticated insect of our own 
country, must be at once dismissed from our mind ; 
and still less may we dwell upon the luxury of 
miniature crystal palaces, in which her majesty 
