The indiscriminate praise formerly lavished on tropical vegetation has received many shocks from recent travellers. In Kaffirland, South Africa, I have seen one or two forests fine enough to justify the enthusiasm of armchair word-painters of the tropics; but so far as the central plateau is concerned, the careful judgment of Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace respecting the equatorial belt in general--a judgment which has at once sobered all modern descriptions of tropical lands, and made imaginative people more content to stay at home--applies almost to this whole area. The fairy labyrinth of ferns and palms, the festoons of climbing plants blocking the paths and scenting the forests with their resplendent flowers, the gorgeous clouds of insects, the gaily-plumaged birds, the paroquets, the monkey swinging from his trapeze in the shaded bowers--these are unknown to Africa. Once a week you will see a palm; once in three months the monkey will cross your path; the flowers on the whole are few; the trees are poor; and, to be honest, though the endless forest-clad mountains have a sublimity of their own, and though there are tropical bits along some of the mountain-streams of exquisite beauty, nowhere is there anything in grace and sweetness and strength to compare with a Highland glen. For the most part of the year these forests are jaded and sun-stricken, carpeted with no moss or alchemylla or scented woodruff, the bare trunks frescoed with few lichens, their motionless and unrefreshed leaves drooping sullenly from their sapless boughs. Flowers there are, small and great, in endless variety; but there is no display of flowers, no gorgeous show of blossom in the mass, as when the blazing gorse and heather bloom at home. The dazzling glare of the sun in the torrid zone has perhaps something to do with this want of color-effect in tropical nature; for there is always about ten minutes just after sunset, when the whole tone of the landscape changes like magic, and a singular beauty steals over the scene. This is the sweetest moment of the African day, and night hides only too swiftly the homelike softness and repose so strangely grateful to the over-stimulated eye.