Gins Are Seen On Both Sides Of The Path
Every Ten Or Fifteen Yards, For Miles Together.
The time and labor required
to dig up moles and mice from their burrows would, if applied to cultivation,
afford food for any amount of fowls or swine, but the latter
are seldom met with.
We passed on through forests abounding in climbing-plants, many of which
are so extremely tough that a man is required to go in front with a hatchet;
and when the burdens of the carriers are caught, they are obliged
to cut the climbers with their teeth, for no amount of tugging
will make them break. The paths in all these forests are so zigzag
that a person may imagine he has traveled a distance of thirty miles,
which, when reckoned as the crow flies, may not be fifteen.
We reached the River Moamba (lat. 9d 38' S., long. 20d 13' 34" E.)
on the 7th May. This is a stream of thirty yards wide, and, like the Quilo,
Loange, Chikapa, and Loajima, contains both alligators and hippopotami.
We crossed it by means of canoes. Here, as on the slopes
down to the Quilo and Chikapa, we had an opportunity of viewing the geological
structure of the country - a capping of ferruginous conglomerate,
which in many parts looks as if it had been melted, for the rounded nodules
resemble masses of slag, and they have a smooth scale on the surface;
but in all probability it is an aqueous deposit, for it contains
water-worn pebbles of all sorts, and generally small.
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