TAITA TO KILIMANJARO. 
8 7 
vegetable soil of the surrounding woodland and in the 
red soil of the river bank, indicated unquestionably 
that a whole troop of lions had been in our immediate 
vicinity during the night. I noticed a curious fact 
connected with the unseen approach of these beasts. 
Whenever a lion was nearing our camp, and before he 
attested his vicinity by a roar, we were, when we had 
learned to read the warning, made aware of the fact 
by the sudden nervous twittering of the small birds in 
the branches above. It was a tremulous diapason of 
fear, most singularly impressive. On several subse¬ 
quent occasions the approach of large wild beasts has 
been signified to me in the same manner. 
The morning that succeeded this disturbed night 
saw us taking the road soon after sunrise, all in the 
best spirits at the approaching termination of a long 
tramp. We walked on for about two hours through 
low forest country, clad with scrubby trees rarely 
exceeding fifteen to twenty feet in height—an under¬ 
growth of large-leaved solanaceous plants, which grew 
so regularly and on a soil so tidy and devoid of weeds 
or grass, that I at first took the country to be cultivated, 
and imagined these thriving herbs to be some kind of 
native tobacco. The wild flowers (ground orchids, 
hibiscus, clematis, and a kind of sunflower) were very 
beautiful and quite brilliant in their displays of colour. 
Within about an hour’s journey from the confines of 
Mosi the path divides into two tracks, one going still 
due west and keeping to the plains, the other turning 
round towards the southern flank of Kilima-njaro, and 
mounting upwards. Here, at this junction, we encoun¬ 
tered some rather disreputable Wa-swahili, shabbily 
clothed (it is the wearing clothes, by-the-bye, which 
enables one in this country to distinguish between the 
