Ere long, the Malagazeri, the chief tributary of Lake
Tanganayika, was seen winding between heavy thickets
of verdure, offering an asylum to many water-courses that
spring from the torrents formed in the season of freshets,
or from ponds hollowed in the clayey soil. To observers
looking from a height, it was a chain of waterfalls thrown
across the whole western face of the country.
Animals with huge humps were feeding in the luxuriant
prairies, and were half hidden, sometimes, in the tall
grass; spreading forests in bloom redolent of spicy perfumes
presented themselves to the gaze like immense bouquets;
but, in these bouquets, lions, leopards, hyenas, and
tigers, were then crouching for shelter from the last hot
rays of the setting sun. From time to time, an elephant
made the tall tops of the undergrowth sway to and fro,
and you could hear the crackling of huge branches as his
ponderous ivory tusks broke them in his way.
"What a sporting country!" exclaimed Dick, unable
longer to restrain his enthusiasm; "why, a single ball fired
at random into those forests would bring down game
worthy of it. Suppose we try it once!"
"No, my dear Dick; the night is close at hand--a
threatening night with a tempest in the background--and
the storms are awful in this country, where the heated soil
is like one vast electric battery.
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