us.  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.  These are more fertile than the rest of the land, and here they are the chief garden-ground for maize, pumpkins, and tobacco.

When we had passed the outskirting villages, which alone consider themselves in a state of war with the Makololo, we found the Batoka, or Batonga, as they here call themselves, quite friendly.  Great numbers of them came from all the surrounding villages with presents of maize and masuka, and expressed great joy at the first appearance of a white man, and harbinger of peace.  The women clothe themselves better than the Balonda, but the men go ‘in puris naturalibus’.  They walk about without the smallest sense of shame.  They have even lost the tradition of the “fig-leaf”.  I asked a fine, large-bodied old man if he did not think it would be better to adopt a little covering.  He looked with a pitying leer, and laughed with surprise at my thinking him at all indecent; he evidently considered himself above such weak superstition.  I told them that, on my return, I should have my family with me, and no one must come near us in that state.  “What shall we put on? we have no clothing.”  It was considered a good joke when I told them that, if they had nothing else, they must put on a bunch of grass.