The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in central Africa . he Makondedialect is quite different from Swaheli, but from their intercoursewith the coast Arabs many of the people here have acquired aknowledge of Swaheli. April 12t/i.—On starting we found the jungle so dense that thepeople thought there was no cutting it: it continued upwardof three miles. The trees are not large, but so closely plantedtogether that a great deal of labor was required to widen andheighten the path: where bamboos prevail they have starved outthe woody trees. The reason why the trees are not large is be-cause all th
The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in central Africa . he Makondedialect is quite different from Swaheli, but from their intercoursewith the coast Arabs many of the people here have acquired aknowledge of Swaheli. April 12t/i.—On starting we found the jungle so dense that thepeople thought there was no cutting it: it continued upwardof three miles. The trees are not large, but so closely plantedtogether that a great deal of labor was required to widen andheighten the path: where bamboos prevail they have starved outthe woody trees. The reason why the trees are not large is be-cause all the spaces we passed over were formerly garden groundbefore the Makonde had been thinned by the slave-trade. Assoon as a garden is deserted, a thick crop of trees of the samesorts as those formerly cut down springs up, and here the processof woody trees starving out their fellows, and occupying the landwithout dense scrub below, has not had time to work itself are mere poles, and so intertwined with climbers as to pre- JX AFRICAN COAST JUNGLE. bl. A Thoru-climber. sent the appearance of a ships ropes and cables shaken in amongthem, and many have woody stems as thick as an eleven-inchhawser. One species may be likened to the scabbard of a dra-goons sword, but along the middleof the flat side runs a ridge fromwhich springs up every few inchesa bunch of inch-long straight sharpthorns. It hangs straight for acouple of yards, but as if it couldnot give its thorns a fair chance ofmischief, it suddenly bends on it-self, and all its cruel points are nowat right angles to what they werebefore. Darwins observation showsa great deal of what looks like instinct in these climbers. Thisspecies seems to be eager for mischief; its tangled limbs hangout ready to inflict injury on all passers-by. Another climberis so tough it is not to be broken by the fingers; another ap-pears at its root as a 3oung tree, but it has the straggling hab-its of its class, as may be seen by its cords stret
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, bookpublisherharper, bookyear187
