11 HALCYON DATS.” 
153 
is like ricli green velvet pile. Here and there, but 
rarely, on the hill-sides there are open patches of land, 
covered with short turf or bracken. These offer, by 
the side of the darker 
forest, tracts of lovely 
grass-green colour, al¬ 
most unrepresentable in 
pigment, from the fact 
that in water-colours or 
oil there is no plain 
tint, or combination of 
tints, that will exactly 
give it, or in which any 
permanency can be 
hoped for. From the 
matrix of one or two 
of the nearer hills 
springs gush forth and 
flow through ever deep¬ 
ening ravines with 
musical clamour, though 
their course and their 
birthplace can only be 
conjectured at a dis¬ 
tance from the greater 
luxuriance of the forest 
, . , , Fig. 40.—Mkindu Palm. 
which they provoke. 
In the foreground I look upon the descending 
northern slope of the great hill from whose summit 
this unexampled view is obtained, and here there is an 
intricate mass of low forest, principally composed of 
the Mkindu palm (belonging to the genus Phoenix , a 
kind of wild date), mixed with indiscriminate shrubs, 
many of them overgrown with parasitic cucurbits and 
