they were metamorphosed into snakes (Culebres). The name Hivites in
Phoenician signifies a snake.

Votan may not, possibly, have passed into Europe; he may have travelled
altogether in Africa. His singular allusion to "a way which the Culebres
had bored" seems at first inexplicable; but Dr. Livingstone's last
letters, published 8th November, 1869, in the "Proceedings of the Royal
Geographical Society," mention that "tribes live in underground houses
in Rua. Some excavations are said to be thirty miles long, and have
running rills in them; a whole district can stand a siege in them. The
'writings' therein, I have been told by some of the people, are drawings
of animals, and not letters; otherwise I should have gone to see them.
People very dark, well made, and outer angle of eyes slanting inward."

And Captain Grant, who accompanied Captain Speke in his famous
exploration of the sources of the Nile, tells of a tunnel or subway
under the river Kaoma, on the highway between Loowemba and Marunga, near
Lake Tanganyika. His guide Manua describes it to him:

"I asked Manua if he had ever seen any country resembling it. His reply
was, 'This country reminds me of what I saw in the country to the south
of the Lake Tanganyika, when travelling with an Arab's caravan from
Unjanyembeh. There is a river there called the Kaoma, running into the
lake, the sides of which are similar in precipitousness to the rocks
before us.' I then asked, 'Do the people cross this river in boats?'
'No; they have no boats; and even if they had, the people could not
land, as the sides are too steep: they pass underneath the river by a
natural tunnel, or subway.' He and all his party went through it on
their way from Loowemba to Ooroongoo, and returned by it. He described
its length as having taken them from sunrise till noon to pass through