I had been careful to bring from Zanzibar four hammocks, which, slung to poles, formed the conveyance, called by the Indians “manchil;” by the Portuguese “manchila;” and in West Africa “tipoia.” Sayf bin Salim agreed for the sum of ten dollars to hire his slaves as porters for ourselves and our outfit. On the 24th July, feeling strong enough to advance, we passed out of the cultivation of Dut’humi. Crossing a steep and muddy bed, knee-deep even in the dry season, we entered fields under the outlying hillocks of the highlands. These low cones, like similar formations in India, are not inhabited; they are even more malarious than the plains, the surface is rocky, and the woodage, not ceasing as in higher elevations, extends from base to summit. Beyond the cultivation the route plunges into a jungle, where the European traveller realises every preconceived idea of Africa’s aspect, at once hideous and grotesque. The general appearance is a mingling of bush and forest, which, contracting the horizon to a few yards, is equally monotonous to the eye and palling to the imagination. The black greasy ground, veiled with thick shrubbery, supports in the more open spaces screens of tiger and spear-grass, twelve and thirteen feet high, with every blade a finger’s breadth; and the towering trees are often clothed from root to twig with huge epiphytes, forming heavy columns of densest verdure, and clustering upon the tops in the semblance of enormous bird’s nests. The foot-paths, in places “dead,”--as the natives say,--with encroaching bush, are crossed by llianas, creepers and climbers, thick as coir-cables, some connecting the trees in a curved line, others stretched straight down the trunks, others winding in all directions around their supports, frequently crossing one another like network and stunting the growth of even the vivacious calabash, by coils like rope tightly encircling its neck. The earth, ever rain-drenched, emits the odour of sulphuretted hydrogen, and in some parts the traveller might fancy a corpse to be hidden behind every bush. To this sad picture of miasma the firmament is a fitting frame: a wild sky, whose heavy purple nimbi, chased by raffales and chilling gusts, dissolve in large-dropped showers; or a dull, dark grey expanse, which lies like a pall over the world. In the finer weather the atmosphere is pale and sickly; its mists and vapours seem to concentrate the rays of the oppressive “rain-sun.” The sensation experienced at once explains the apathy and indolence, the physical debility, and the mental prostration, that are the gifts of climates which moist heat and damp cold render equally unsalubrious and uncomfortable. That no feature of miasma might be wanting to complete the picture, filthy heaps of the rudest hovels, built in holes in the jungle, sheltered their few miserable inhabitants, whose frames are lean with constant intoxication, and whose limbs, distorted by ulcerous sores, attest the hostility of Nature to mankind.