granite that start up into the air as though they were monuments carved
by man, and not tombstones set by nature over the grave of ages gone. On
the west this beautiful plain is bordered by the lonely mountain, from
the edge of which it rolls down toward the fever coast; but how far it
runs to the north I cannot say--eight days' journey, according to the
natives, when it is lost in an untravelled morass.

"On the hither side of the river the scenery is different. Along the
edge of its banks, where the land is flat, are green patches of swamp.
Then comes a wide belt of beautiful grass land covered thickly with
game, and sloping up very gently to the borders of the forest, which,
beginning at about a thousand feet above the level of the plain, clothes
the mountain-side almost to its crest. In this forest grow great trees,
most of them of the yellow-wood species. Some of these trees are so
lofty, that a bird in their top branches would be out of range of an
ordinary shot gun. Another peculiar thing about them is, that they are
for the most part covered with a dense growth of the Orchilla moss; and
from this moss the natives manufacture a most excellent deep purple dye,
with which they stain tanned hides and also cloth, when they happen
to get any of the latter. I do not think that I ever saw anything more
remarkable than the appearance of one of these mighty trees festooned
from top to bottom with trailing wreaths of this sad-hued moss, in which
the wind whispers gently as it stirs them. At a distance it looks like
the gray locks of a Titan crowned with bright green leaves, and here and
there starred with the rich bloom of orchids.

"The night of that day on which I had my little difference of opinion
with Gobo, we camped by the edge of this great forest, and on the
following morning at daylight I started out shooting. As we were short
of meat I determined to kill a buffalo, of which there were plenty