hose that still cling with their hooked jaws, as with steel forceps.
This kind abounds in damp places, and is usually met with on the banks of
streams. We have not heard of their actually killing any animal except
the Python, and that only when gorged and quite lethargic, but they soon
clear away any dead animal matter; this appears to be their principal
food, and their use in the economy of nature is clearly in the scavenger
line.

We started from the Sinjere on the 12th of June, our men carrying with
them bundles of hippopotamus meat for sale, and for future use. We
rested for breakfast opposite the Kakolole dyke, which confines the
channel, west of the Manyerere mountain. A rogue monkey, the largest by
far that we ever saw, and very fat and tame, walked off leisurely from a
garden as we approached. The monkey is a sacred animal in this region,
and is never molested or killed, because the people believe devoutly that
the souls of their ancestors now occupy these degraded forms, and
anticipate that they themselves must, sooner or later, be transformed in
like manner; a future as cheerless for the black as the spirit-rapper's
heaven is for the whites. The gardens are separated from each other by a
single row of small stones, a few handfuls of grass, or a slight furrow
made by the hoe. Some are enclosed by a reed fence of the flimsiest
construction, yet sufficient to keep out the ever wary hippopotamus, who
dreads a trap. His extreme caution is taken advantage of by the women,
who hang, as a miniature trap-beam, a kigelia fruit with a bit of stick
in the end. This protects the maize, of which he is excessively fond.

The quantity of hippopotamus meat eaten by our men made some of them ill,
and our marches were necessarily short. After three hours' travel on the
13th, we spent the remainder of the day at the village of Chasiribera, on
a rivulet flowing through a beautiful valley to the north, which is
bounded by magnificent mountain-ranges. Pinkwe, or Mbingwe, otherwise
Moeu, forms the south-eastern angle of the range. On the 16th June we
were at the flourishing village of Senga, under the headman Manyame,
which lies at the foot of the mount Motemwa. Nearly all the mountains in
this country are covered with open forest and grass, in colour, according
to the season, green or yellow. Many are between 2000 and 3000 feet
high, with the sky line fringed with trees; the rocks show just
sufficiently for one to obser