We travelled on, with rare and brief halts for rest at wayside hamlets, until near sunset, when we reached a small, primitive village called Obedumássi, at which we brought up for the night, and where our experiences of the previous evening were repeated. The headman, at whose house we lodged, kept a civet in a kind of wooden hutch for the purpose of extracting the perfume, and I had an opportunity of witnessing the operation. The animal was first poked with a stick to make it fly round its narrow cage until in the course of its gyrations it allowed its tail to project between the bars. This was immediately grabbed by the operator and pulled so that the unfortunate beast was jammed helplessly against the bars, when the perfume was scooped out of the scent-gland by means of a wooden implement like a marrow-spoon. This curious unctuous substance had a disgusting odour somewhat like that of a recently-extinguished tallow candle, mingled with the scent of musk, but Annan assured me that “the Hausa men find it sweet too much,” so I purchased a small quantity with a view to future contingencies. The next day was one of almost continuous trudging along a path that was far from good to walk upon. This everlasting marching would have been as monotonous as it was fatiguing but for the novelty of the surroundings, which were almost as strange to me as if I had but just come from England. Our route on this day lay through an extensive swamp, some parts of which were overgrown with bamboos, and here the aspect of nature was most singular and impressive. The bamboo could be seen as we approached it, an immense cloudy mass of moving green with mysterious cavern-like openings which led into a dim interior like that of some colossal crypt. The canes rose out of the ground in huge bundles like great clustered columns, and interlaced overhead in an impenetrable vault, so that the gloomy interior was broken up into a maze of aisles and transepts, some leading away into absolute black darkness, others showing a distant spot of bright light--the opening on the further side of the thicket.