Chap. XXIII. 
SCARCITY OF AISTMALS — FORESTS. 
453 
bamboo, and persevere, though no one hears the music but them¬ 
selves. Others try to appear warlike by never going out of their 
huts, except with a load of bows and arrows, or a gun ornamented 
with a strip of hide for every animal they have shot; and others 
never go anywhere without a canary in a cage. Ladies may be 
seen carefully tending little lapdogs, which are intended to be 
eaten. Their villages are generally in forests, and composed of 
groups of uTegularly planted brown huts, with banana and cotton 
trees, and tobacco growing around. There is also at every hut a 
high stage erected for drying manioc roots and meal, and elevated 
cages to hold domestic fowls. Eound baskets are laid on the 
thatch of the huts, for the hens to lay in, and on the arrival of 
strangers, men, women, and children ply then calhng as hucksters, 
with a great deal of noisy haggling; all their transactions are 
conducted with civil banter and good temper. 
My men, having the meat of the oxen wliich we slaughtered 
from time to time for sale, were entreated to exchange it for 
meal; no matter how small the pieces offered were, it gave them 
pleasure to deal. 
The landscape around is green, with a tint of yeUow, the grass 
long, the paths about a foot wide, and generally worn deeply in 
the middle. The tall overhanging grass, when brushed against 
by the feet and legs, disturbed the lizards and mice, and occasion¬ 
ally a serpent, causing a rustling amongst the herbage. There 
are not many bnds ; every animal is entrapped and eaten. Gins 
are seen on both sides of the path every ten or fifteen yards, for 
miles together. The time and labour required to dig up moles 
and mice from then burrows, would, if apphed to cultivation, 
afford food for any amount of fowls or swine, but the latter are 
seldom met with. 
We passed on tlnough forests abomiding in chmbing-plants, 
many of which are so extremely tough, that a man is required to 
go in front with a hatchet; and when the burdens of the carriers 
are caught, they are obliged to cut the climbers 'with their teeth, 
for no amount of tugging will make them break. The paths in 
all these forests are so zigzag, that a person may imagine he has 
travelled a distance of thirty miles, which, when reckoned as the 
crow flies, may not be fifteen. 
We reached the river Moamba (lat. 9° 38' S., long. 20° 13' 34" 
