Crowds Of Natives Hovered Round Us In The Forest;
But He Ran Forward And Explained, And We Were Not Molested.
That Night We Slept By A Little Village Under A Low Range Of Hills,
Which Are Called Chizamena.
The country here is more woody
than on the high lands we had left, but the trees are not in general large.
Great numbers of them have been broken off by elephants a foot or two
from the ground:
They thus seem pollarded from that point.
This animal never seriously lessens the number of trees; indeed,
I have often been struck by the very little damage he does in a forest.
His food consists more of bulbs, tubers, roots, and branches,
than any thing else. Where they have been feeding, great numbers of trees,
as thick as a man's body, are seen twisted down or broken off,
in order that they may feed on the tender shoots at the tops.
They are said sometimes to unite in wrenching down large trees.
The natives in the interior believe that the elephant never touches grass,
and I never saw evidence of his having grazed until we came near to Tete,
and then he had fed on grass in seed only; this seed contains
so much farinaceous matter that the natives collect it for their own food.
This part of the country abounds in ant-hills. In the open parts
they are studded over the surface exactly as haycocks are in harvest,
or heaps of manure in spring, rather disfiguring the landscape.
In the woods they are as large as round haystacks, 40 or 50 feet in diameter
at the base, and at least 20 feet high.
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