Chap. XVIII. ABSENCE OF THORNS IN FOREST. 
345 
'vvind up from left to right, on the other bank from right to left. 
I imagined this was owing to the sun being at one season of 
the year on their north, and a*t another on their south. But 
on the Leeambye, I observed creepers winding up on opposite 
sides of the same reed, and making a figure like the lacings of 
a sandal. 
In passing through these narrow paths, I had an opportunity 
of observing the peculiarities of my ox ^^Sinbad.” He had a 
softer back than the others, but a much more intractable temper. 
His horns were bent downwards and hung loosely, so he could 
do no harm with them; but as we wended our way slowly along 
the narrow path, he would suddenly dart aside. A string tied 
to a stick put through the cartilage of the nose serves instead 
of a bridle : if you jerk this back, it makes him run faster on; 
if you pull it to one side, he allows the nose and head to go, 
but keeps the opposite eye directed to the forbidden spot, and 
goes in spite of you. The only way he can be brought to a 
stand is by a stroke with a wand across the nose. When Sinbad 
ran in below a climber stretched over the path, so low that I 
could not stoop under it, I was dragged off and came down on 
the crown of my head ; and he never allowed an opportunity of 
the kind to pass without trying to inflict a kick, as if I neither 
had nor deserved his love. 
A remarliable peculiarity in the forests of this country is the 
absence of thorns; there are but two exceptions—one a tree 
bearing a species of nux vomica, and a small shrub very like the 
plant of the sarsaparilla, bearing in addition to its hooked thorns 
bunches of yellow berries. The thornlessness of the vegetation 
is especially noticeable to those who have been in the south, 
where there is so great a variety of thorn-bearing plants and 
trees. We have thorns of every size and shape; thorns straight, 
thin and long, short and thick, or hooked, and so strong as to be 
able to cut even leather like a knife. Seed-vessels are scattered 
everywhere by these appendages. One lies flat as a shilling, 
with two thorns in its centre, ready to run into the foot of any 
animal that treads upon it, and stick there for days together. 
Another (the Uncar la procumbens, or grapple-plant) has so many 
hooked thorns as to cling most tenaciously to any animal to 
which it may become attached; when it happens to lay hold of 
