reduced by their own slaving habits to a miserable jungly
state. They feed much on wild fruits, roots, and leaves; and yet are
generally plump. They use a wooden hoe for sowing their maere, it is
a sort of V-shaped implement, made from a branch with another
springing out of it, about an inch in diameter at the sharp point, and
with it they claw the soil after scattering the seed; about a dozen
young men were so employed in the usual small patches as we passed in
the morning.

The country now exhibits the extreme of leafiness and the undulations
are masses of green leaves; as far as the eye can reach with
distinctness it rests on a mantle of that hue, and beyond the scene
becomes dark blue. Near at hand many gay flowers peep out. Here and
there the scarlet martagon (_Lilium chalcedonicum_), bright blue or
yellow gingers; red, orange, yellow, and pure white orchids; pale
lobelias, &c.; but they do not mar the general greenness. As we
ascended higher on the plateau, grasses, which have pink and reddish
brown seed-vessels imparted distinct shades of their colours to the
lawns, and were grateful to the eye. We turned aside early in our
march to avoid being wetted by rains, and took shelter in some old
Babisa sheds; these, when the party is a slaving one, are built so as
to form a circle, with but one opening: a ridge pole, or rather a
succession of ridge poles, form one long shed all round, with no
partitions in the roof-shaped hut.

On the _9th of January_ we ascended a hardened sandstone range. Two
men who accompanied our guide called out every now and then to attract
the attention of the honey-guide, but none appeared. A water-buck had
been killed and eaten at one spot, the ground showing marks of a
severe struggle, but no game was to be seen. Buffaloes and elephants
come here at certain seasons; at present they have migrated elsewhere.
The valleys are very beautiful: the oozes are covered with a species
of short wiry grass, which gives the valleys the appearance of
well-kept gentlemen's parks; but they are full of water to
overflowing--immense sponges in fact;--and one has to watch carefully
in crossing them to avoid plunging into deep water-holes, made by the
feet of elephants or buffaloes. In the ooze generally the water comes
half-way up the shoe, and we go plash, plash, plash, in the lawn-like
glade. There are no people here now in these lovely wild valleys; but
to-day we came to mounds made of old for planting gra