Communications interiorwards are certain; but between the coast and Stanley Pool everything must be transported on men’s heads, until there shall be a railway. The roads are mere footpaths over the hills from town to town; while the tall thick grass is so strong that it must be hoed up and the bushes cleared before any wheeled carriage could be used. Then again the country is so torn, and streams in their deep gorges so abundant, that travelling is very largely a series of ascents and descents. CHAPTER III. Vegetation, Climate, and People. The vegetation is very varied in the rock-strewn sides of the ravines, in the granitic and quartzose regions it is very bare and weak. But where the plateau level has been less disturbed, the thick _maxinde_ grass (x = sh) shows the richness of the soil; while the carefully tended farms near the towns, beautiful with the rich green of the ground-nut, thickly tangled with sweet-potatoes, or jungled with cassava bushes, show what can be done with the soil, by clearing and a little scratching with the hoe. [Illustration: A CONGO VILLAGE.] In the broader valleys, where the streams are smaller, or have done less destruction to the country, grows the giant _diàdia_ grass, the stems often attaining two and a half inches in circumference and a mean height of fifteen feet; there may be found some of the richest soil in the world. Where the _diàdia_ has been exists the wildest luxuriance of vegetation; palms, plantain, Indian corn, ground-nuts, yams and all garden produce are at their best, and ever at the mercy of the elephants, who rejoice in such choice selection. In the Majinga country the native houses have to be scattered through their rich farms, and morning and night the people shout, scream, and beat their drums to frighten off these giant marauders.