04 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
by geometrical designs worked in with dyed strands. The colors of these 
strands are usually yellow, red, blue and black. 
From Kassata to Yangi the country continues to be steeply rolling and 
several hills, well forested, are traversed. Most of the hills reach an eleva- 
tion of ten to eleven hundred feet, although the village of Yangi is located 
on one 1,450 feet high. In this town, oranges, bananas, cassava, and peanuts 
are raised for local and apparently temporary needs. Around the gardens of 
this hill-top village, there are fences made by sticking lengths of Hrythrina 
senegalensis into the ground, and these have taken root, grown, and bear 
the conspicuous scarlet-red flowers. 
From Yangi the descent is steep as may be judged by the fact that we de- 
scend, according to the barometer, six hundred and forty feet in twelve minutes, 
when we reach the more or less level valley in which Bakratown is situated. 
The immediate neighborhood of this town is covered by secondary growth of 
the usual type. The climbing fern, Lygodium sp., grows over the lower bushes, 
as does the leguminous vine Milletia Zechiana and Mucuna pruriens. <A tree, 
fifteen to twenty feet high, not previously or subsequently seen, is Myrianthus 
serratus which very closely resembles Artocarpus tncisa, especially in respect 
to its fruit, which, however, is somewhat smaller. This fruit, I am told, is 
eaten by the local Mandingo people, but not by the Vai. Along the path in 
exposed places, the four-foot tall plant of Desmodium adscendens and Cassia 
Kirk are of common occurrence. On the north slope of a low hill, in secondary 
erowth where humus has collected, grows the leafless gentian of the subfamily 
Laeiphameae. ‘The small white flowers are borne singly on slender stems that 
do not exceed six inches in length. In the same habitat two interesting fungi 
also occur, — an ochraceous species of Clavaria, and a species of Geoglossum, 
thus making the second locality in Liberia for a representative of this genus. 
The road from Bakratown, for the first hour, passes through secondary 
growth, and then, for the greater part of the distance, through tall forests, 
some of them indeed very beautiful and apparently untouched. Such places 
appear to be very favorable for the persistence of Tetracera potatoria, a liane 
famous for the fact that when the stem is cut it furnishes pure water. A section 
of the stem, seven to eight feet long and ten to fifteen centimeters in diameter 
gives up about a half a glass of colorless and odorless water in which there are 
no raphides. In the more open parts of the tall forests, and growing on gravelly 
soil is a species of Hryngium known under the Kpwesi name of ‘‘ goomanderri.”’ 
It is used for reducing fevers by rubbing the leaves over the body. 
Near two abandoned villages there are fairly large fields of sugar cane that 
have apparently been allowed to grow of their own accord in recent years. 
A hasty examination of this field gave no evidence of the presence of mosaic 
disease, although one case of ‘“‘yellows”’ was observed. At the edge of these 
fields is a thicket of Dichrostachys glomerata, a low tree that has not been seen 
since Monrovia was left behind. 
Beyond the town of Fetoma where Xylopia aethiopica is collected, the 
forest continues, though there is an occasional break in it where rice fields are 
