chap, viii.] NATURAL FEATURES OF OBBO. 
313 
Obbo, upon an elevated plateau, 1,438 feet above the 
general level of the country on the east of the mountain 
range. The climate would be healthy were the country 
sufficiently populated to war successfully against nature; 
but the rainfall continuing during ten months of the 
year, from February to the end of November, and the 
soil being extremely fertile, the increase of vegetation 
is too rapid, and the scanty population are hemmed in 
and overpowered by superabundant herbage. This 
mass of foliage, and grasses of ten feet in height inter¬ 
woven with creeping plants and wild grape-vines, is 
perfectly impenetrable to man, and forms avast jungle, 
inhabited by elephants, rhinoceros, and buffaloes, whose 
ponderous strength alone can overcome it. There are 
few antelopes, as those animals dislike the grass jungles, 
in which they have no protection against the lion or 
the leopard, as such beasts of prey can approach them 
unseen. In the month of January the grass is suf¬ 
ficiently dry to burn, but even at that period there is 
a quantity of fresh green grass growing between the 
withered stems ; thus the firing of the prairies does 
not absolutely clear the country, but merely consumes 
the dry matter, and leaves a ruin of charred herbage, 
rendered so tough by the burning, that it is quite 
impossible to ride without cutting the skin from the 
horse's shins and shoulders. Altogether, it is a most 
