240 
GRAPHIC ,DESCRIPTION OF AFRICA. 
between the coast and Unyanyembe. Great cones shoot upward 
above the everlasting forests, tipped by the light fleecy clouds, 
through which the warm glowing sun darts its rays, bathing the 
whole in a quickening radiance which brings out those globes of 
foliage that rise in tier after tier along the hill-sides in rich and 
varied hues which would mock the most ambitious painter’s skill. 
From the winding paths along the crest of ridges the traveler may 
look down over forest-clad slopes into the deep valleys, and across 
to other slopes as gayly clad, and other ridges where deep concentric 
folds tempt him to curious wanderings by their beauty and mystery 
and grandeur. But those lovely glades and queenly hills told sad¬ 
dest stories of cruel deeds and wrongs irreparable. It is the old 
story: envious evil eagerly invades with its polluting presence those 
sacred spots where all is loveliest; infernal malice mars with strange 
delight what is beautiful and pure. 
CITIES BUILT BY INSECTS. 
Further on the caravan passed through the thin forests adorned 
with myriads of marvellous ant-hills, those wonderful specimens 
of engineering talent and architectural capacity, those cunningly 
contrived, model cities, with which the tiny denizens of African 
wilds astonish the traveler continually; and on across plains dotted 
with artificial-looking cones and flat-topped, isolated mountains, and 
through marshy ravines, where every unlucky step insured a bath 
in Stygian ooze—the various scenes of southern Ukonongo— 
“Where the thorny brake and thicket 
Densely fill the interspace 
Of the trees, through whose thick branches 
Never sunshine lights the place”— 
the abode of lions and leopards and elephants and wild boars, one 
of those splendid parks of the wilderness where majestic forest and 
jungles, and lawn-like glades, and reedy brakes and perilous chasms 
all unite to forni that climax of wildness and beauty, ''the hunter’s 
paradise.” It was just the place to arouse all the Nimrod spirit a 
man possesses. 
The surface stratum of the country is clay, overlying the sand- 
