ecede,
and wide plains begin to open to the east and south. As the country
sinks, the temperature rises and the air grows heavier and less keen.
The ground is covered with wood, and in the woods along the streams a
few palms and bamboos and other tropical forms of vegetation begin to
appear.[56] But we found the woods in many places stripped bare.
Terrible swarms of locusts had passed, leaving a track of dismal
bareness. It had been a dry year, too, and even what grass the locusts
had spared was thin and withered. Thus for want of food the cattle had
perished. All along the road from Mtali we saw oxen lying dead, often by
some pool in a brook, to which they had staggered to drink, and where
they lay down to die. We encountered few waggons, and those few were
almost all standing with the team unyoked, some of their beasts dead or
sickly, some, too weak to draw the load farther, obliged to stand idly
where they had halted till the animals should regain strength, or fresh
oxen be procured. This is what a visitation of locusts means, and this
is how the progress of a country is retarded by the stoppage of the only
means of transport.

We reached the terminus of the railway at Chimoyo after two days' long
and fatiguing travel from Mtali, including an upset of our vehicle in
descending a steep donga to the bed of a streamlet--an upset which might
easily have proved serious, but gave us nothing worse than a few
bruises. The custom being to start a train in the afternoon and run it
through the night,--all trains were then special,--we had plenty of time
to look round the place, and fortunately found a comfortable store and a
most genial Scottish landlord from Banffshire. There was, however,
nothing to see, not even Portuguese local colour; for though Chimoyo is
well within the Portuguese frontier, the village is purely English, and
was living by the transport service which then made the end of the
railway its starting-point for the territories of the Company. Now that
it has become merely a station, the railway being now (1899) open all
the way to Fort Salisbury, it may have dwindled away. Having nothing
else to do, I climbed through the sultry noon to the top of the nearest
kopje, a steep granite hill which, as I was afterwards told, is a
favourite "house of call" for lions. No forest monarch, however,
presented himself to welcome me, and I was left to enjoy the view alone.
It was striking. Guarding the western horizon rose th