The Bee-Hunter
Being Provided With Vessels Formed From The Rind Of The Gourd Attached
To Ropes, Now Cuts Up The Comb And Fills His Chatties, Lowering Them
Down To His Companions Below.
When the blossom of the nillho fades, the seed forms; this is a sweet
little kernel, with the flavour of a nut.
The bees now leave the
country, and the jungles suddenly swarm, as though by magic, with
pigeons, jungle-fowl, and rats. At length the seed is shed and the
nillho dies.
The jungles then have a curious appearance. The underwood being dead,
the forest-trees rise from a mass of dry sticks like thin hop-poles. The
roots of these plants very soon decay, and a few weeks of high wind,
howling through the forest, levels the whole mass, leaving the trees
standing free from underwood. The appearance of the ground can now be
imagined-a perfect chaos of dead sticks and poles, piled one on the
other, in every direction, to a depth of between two and three feet. It
can only be compared to a mass of hurdles being laid in a heap. The
young nillho grows rapidly through this, concealing the mass of dead
sticks beneath, and forms a tangled barrier which checks both dogs and
man. With tough gaiters to guard the shins, we break through by main
force and weight, and the dogs scramble sometimes over, sometimes under
the surface. At this period the elk are in great numbers, as they feed
with great avidity upon the succulent young nillho.
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