“The country is extremely beautiful, but difficult to travel over. The mountains of light gray granite stand like islands in new red sandstone, and mountain and valley are all clad in a mantle of different shades of green. The vegetation is indescribably rank. Through the grass--if grass it can be called, which is over half an inch in diameter in the stalk and from ten to twelve feet high--nothing but elephants can walk. The leaves of this megatherium grass are armed with minute spikes, which, as we worm our way along elephant walks, rub disagreeably on the side of the face where the gun is held, and the hand is made sore by fending it off the other side for hours. The rains were fairly set in by November; and in the mornings, or after a shower, these leaves were loaded with a moisture which wet us to the bone. The valleys are deeply undulating, and in each innumerable dells have to be crossed. There may be only a thread of water at the bottom, but the mud, mire or (_scottice_) ‘glaur’ is grevious; thirty or forty yards of the path on each side of the stream are worked by the feet of passengers into an adhesive compound. By placing a foot on each side of the narrow way one may waddle a little distance along, but the rank crop of grasses, gingers, and bushes cannot spare the few inches of soil required for the side of the foot, and down he comes into the slough. The path often runs along the bed of the rivulet for sixty or more yards, as if he who first cut it out went that distance seeking for a part of the forest less dense for his axe. In other cases the muale palm, from which here, as in Madagascar, grass cloth is woven and called by the same name, ‘lamba,’ has taken possession of the valley. The leaf stalks, as thick as a strong man’s arm, fall off and block up all passage save by a path made and mixed up by the feet of elephants and buffaloes; the slough therein is groan-compelling and deep. [Illustration: “I’LL SHOOT YOU, IF YOU DROP THAT BOX.”]