an inch wide, and never did the pugnacity of either man or beast exceed theirs.  It is a sufficient cause of war if you only approach them, even by accident.  Some turn out of the ranks and stand with open mandibles, or, charging with extended jaws, bite with savage ferocity.  When hunting, we lighted among them too often; while we were intent on the game, and without a thought of ants, they quietly covered us from head to foot, then all began to bite at the same instant; seizing a piece of the skin with their powerful pincers, they twisted themselves round with it, as if determined to tear it out.  Their bites are so terribly sharp that the bravest must run, and then strip to pick off those that still cling with their hooked jaws, as with steel forceps.  This kind abounds in damp places, and is usually met with on the banks of streams.  We have not heard of their actually killing any animal except the Python, and that only when gorged and quite lethargic, but they soon clear away any dead animal matter; this appears to be their principal food, and their use in the economy of nature is clearly in the scavenger line.

We started from the Sinjere on the 12th of June, our men carrying with them bundles of hippopotamus meat for sale, and for future use.  We rested for breakfast opposite the Kakolole dyke, which confines the channel, west of the Manyerere mountain.  A rogue monkey, the largest by far that we ever saw, and very fat and tame, walked off leisurely from a garden as we approached.  The monkey is a sacred animal in this region, and is never molested or killed, because the people believe devoutly that the souls of their ancestors now occupy these degraded forms, and anticipate that they themselves must, sooner or later, be transformed in like manner; a future as cheerless for the black as the spirit-rapper’s heaven is for the whites.  The gardens are separated from each other by a single row of small stones, a few handfuls of grass, or a slight furrow made by the hoe.  Some are enclosed by a reed fence of the flimsiest construction, yet sufficient to keep out the ever wary hippopotamus, who dreads a trap.  His extreme caution is taken advantage of by the women, who hang, as a miniature trap-beam, a kigelia fruit with a bit of stick in the end.  This protects the maize, of which he is excessively fond.

The quantity of hippopotamus meat eaten by our men made some of them ill, and our marches were necessarily short.  After three hours’ travel on the 13th, we spent the remainder of the day at the village of Chasiribera, on a rivulet flowing through a beautiful valley to the north, which is bounded by magnificent mountain-ranges.  Pinkwe, or Mbingwe, otherwise Moeu, forms the south-eastern angle of the range.  On the 16th June we were at the flourishing village of Senga, under the headman Manyame, which lies at the foot of the mount Motemwa.  Nearly all the mountains in this country are covered with open forest