A Trip to Calumbo. 
35 
or seaward, quartz and pebbles showing here and 
there an old true coast. 
After a five hours’ ride we reached Cavua, the 
half-way house, where breakfast had been sent on ; 
the habitations are wretched thatches, crowded 
with pigs and mosquitoes. Clearings had all ended, 
and the red land formed broken waves of poor soil, 
almost nude of vegetation at this mid-winter of 
the tropics, except thickets of “ milk plant ” and 
forests of quadrangular cactus; the latter are 
quaint as the dragon-tree, some twenty feet tall 
and mostly sun-scorched to touchwood. The 
baobab ( adansonia) is apparently of two kinds, the 
“ Imbundeiro,” hung with long-stringed calabashes, 
which forms swarming-places for bees; and the 
“ Aliconda ” (. Nkondo ), whose gourd is almost 
sessile, and whose bark supplies fibre for cloth 
and ropes. The haskul or hig-aloe of Somali¬ 
land was not absent, and, amongst other wild fruits, 
I saw scattered over the ground the husks of a 
strychnine, like the east African species. Deer, 
hares, and partridges are spoken of in these soli¬ 
tudes, but they must be uncommonly hard to find 
at such a season. 
About three hours after leaving Cavua were 
spent upon this high, dry, and healthy desert, 
when suddenly we sighted the long reaches of the 
Cuanza River, sharply contrasting, like the Nile, 
with the tawny yellow grounds about its valley. 
