KIRI TO LABORE. 7
“wide, moist patches covered with Cyperus grass, and inter-
vening breaks of sward, where Pentstemon (?) and red Ipomaeas bloom, and reddish and white sandy patches form the favourite habitats of balanites and long-thorned mimosas. After a three hours’ march we rested a while near a stream of clear, cool water. As the road nears the extensive chain of the Kuku mountains, the hills begin to rise, and gradually form a kind of barrier, behind which the well-wooded mountains, rising in two high terraces, almost vanish out of sight. From this point the footpath leads along half-way up between the hill-tops and the river, which is here narrow and foaming, and more like
a mountain torrent than like the Nile as seen at either Lado or Dufilé. It sinks down into deep gullies formed by the rain, only to rise again suddenly, and then to lead us past magnificent clusters of trees (tamarinds, Butyrospernvum) to the station of Labore, situated on an almost isolated hill (1700 feet) and therefore visible from a long distance. The scenery of the country just traversed reminds one by its grandeur of certain districts in the Balkans.
On the way we had heard a good deal about the elephants, which, being very numerous here, break into the stations and unroof the huts. I saw at this place a soldier who had been wounded by an elephant. The animal, which had no doubt been previously wounded, and therefore become separated from
its companions, had hidden itself in the bush at a bend in the road, and lifted with its tusks the foremost of the soldiers who were returning from Dufilé into the air. When, however, the soldier thrust his arm into its mouth, it dropped him, and trans- fixed the upper part of his right thigh. Then, molested by shots, 16 relinquished its victim and retired. The wound was of no great importance, as fortunately the tusk passed between the muscles without injuring any vessel.
Labore is strategically an important position. The same evening about two hundred porters had collected in order to place themselves at our service for the next long march of forty miles to Dufilé, and after they had abundantly supped, and danced and sung for half the night, a start was made
early the next morning. The scenery along the road is magnificent, and teems with life. The blue river foams in a