In passing through these narrow paths I had an opportunity of observing the peculiarities of my ox “Sinbad”.  He had a softer back than the others, but a much more intractable temper.  His horns were bent downward and hung loosely, so he could do no harm with them; but as we wended our way slowly along the narrow path, he would suddenly dart aside.  A string tied to a stick put through the cartilage of the nose serves instead of a bridle:  if you jerk this back, it makes him run faster on; if you pull it to one side, he allows the nose and head to go, but keeps the opposite eye directed to the forbidden spot, and goes in spite of you.  The only way he can be brought to a stand is by a stroke with a wand across the nose.  When Sinbad ran in below a climber stretched over the path so low that I could not stoop under it, I was dragged off and came down on the crown of my head; and he never allowed an opportunity of the kind to pass without trying to inflict a kick, as if I neither had nor deserved his love.

A remarkable peculiarity in the forests of this country is the absence of thorns:  there are but two exceptions; one a tree bearing a species of ‘nux vomica’, and a small shrub very like the plant of the sarsaparilla, bearing, in addition to its hooked thorns, bunches of yellow berries.  The thornlessness of the vegetation is especially noticeable to those who have been in the south, where there is so great a variety of thorn-bearing plants and trees.  We have thorns of every size and shape; thorns straight, thin and long, short and thick, or hooked, and so strong as to be able to cut even leather like a knife.  Seed-vessels are scattered every where by these appendages.  One lies flat as a shilling with two thorns in its centre, ready to run into the foot of any animal that treads upon it, and stick there for days together.  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.