Even the horny sole of the sandal-less African cannot tread these places without being cut or staked, and everywhere a ride through these grass-avenues whilst still dripping with the cold exhalations of night, with the sun beating fiercely upon the upper part of the body, is a severe infliction to any man not in perfect health. The beds of streams and nullahs are sometimes veiled by the growth of the banks. These crops spring up with the rains, and are burned down by hunters, or more frequently by accident, after about a month of dry weather; in the interim fires are dangerous: the custom is to beat down the blaze with leafy boughs. Such is the variety of species that in some parts of the river-valleys each day introduces the traveller to a grass before unseen. Where the inundations lie long, the trees are rare, and those that exist are slightly raised by mounds above the ground to escape the destructive effects of protracted submergence: in these places the decomposed vegetation exhales a fetid odour. Where the waters soon subside there are clumps of tall shrubbery and seams of forest rising on extensive meadows of grassy land, which give it the semblance of a suite of natural parks or pleasure-grounds, and the effect is not diminished by the frequent herds of gnu and antelope prancing and pacing over their pastures. The climate is hot and oppressive, and the daily sea-breeze, which extends to the head of the Mgeta valley, is lost in the lower levels. About Zungomero rain is constant, except for a single fortnight in the month of January; it seems to the stranger as if the crops must infallibly decay, but they do not. At most times the sun, even at its greatest northern declination, shines through a veil of mist with a sickly blaze and a blistering heat, and the overcharge of electricity is evidenced by frequent and violent thunder-storms. In the western parts cold and cutting breezes descend from the rugged crags of Dut’humi.