Another (The `Uncaria Procumbens', Or Grapple-Plant)
Has So Many Hooked Thorns As To Cling Most Tenaciously To Any Animal To Which
It May Become Attached; When It Happens To Lay Hold Of The Mouth Of An Ox,
The Animal Stands And Roars With Pain And A Sense Of Helplessness.
Whenever a part of the forest has been cleared for a garden,
and afterward abandoned, a species of plant, with leaves like those of ginger,
springs up, and contends for the possession of the soil
with a great crop of ferns.
This is the case all the way down to Angola,
and shows the great difference of climate between this
and the Bechuana country, where a fern, except one or two hardy species,
is never seen. The plants above mentioned bear a pretty pink flower
close to the ground, which is succeeded by a scarlet fruit full of seeds,
yielding, as so many fruits in this country do, a pleasant acid juice,
which, like the rest, is probably intended as a corrective
to the fluids of the system in the hot climate.
On leaving the Chihune we crossed the Longe, and, as the day was cloudy,
our guides wandered in a forest away to the west till we came
to the River Chihombo, flowing to the E.N.E. My men depended so much
on the sun for guidance that, having seen nothing of the luminary all day,
they thought we had wandered back to the Chiboque, and, as often happens
when bewildered, they disputed as to the point where the sun should rise
next morning.
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