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The leaves of indigenous trees were all drooping, soft, and shriveled, though not dead; and those of the mimosae were closed at midday, the same as they are at night. In the midst of this dreary drought, it was wonderful to see those tiny creatures, the ants, running about with their accustomed vivacity.
With the exception of a few salsolae and atriplex, the plains were exceedingly bare, and had innumerable patches of water over them, not more than two or three inches deep. At intervals pure sand hills occurred, on which there were a few stunted casuarina and mimosae, but a good deal of grass and thousands of young plants already springing up.
Sometimes the leaves were palmate, or of the shape of large outstretched hands; at others, finely cut or feathery, like the leaves of Mimosae. Below, the tree trunks were everywhere linked together by sipos; the woody, flexible stems of climbing and creeping trees, whose foliage is far away above, mingled with that of the taller independent trees.
Then the syenite or granite seemed as if it had been melted, for it was all in striae, which striae, as they do elsewhere, run east and west. With the change in geological structure we get a different vegetation. Instead of the laurel-leaved trees of various kinds, we have African ebonies, acacias, and mimosae: the grass is shorter and more sparse, and we can move along without wood-cutting.
These are generally covered with wild date-trees and palmyras, and in some parts there are forests of mimosae and mopane. Occasionally the country between the Chobe and Zambesi is flooded, and there are large patches of swamps lying near the Chobe or on its banks. The Makololo were living among these swamps for the sake of the protection the deep reedy rivers afforded them against their enemies.
If the eye was turned from the world of foliage above, to the ground beneath, it was attracted by the extreme elegance of the leaves of the ferns and mimosae. The latter, in some parts, covered the surface with a brushwood only a few inches high. In walking across these thick beds of mimosae, a broad track was marked by the change of shade, produced by the drooping of their sensitive petioles.
If the eye was turned from the world of foliage above, to the ground beneath, it was attracted by the extreme elegance of the leaves of the ferns and mimosae. The latter, in some parts, covered the surface with a brushwood only a few inches high. In walking across these thick beds of mimosae, a broad track was marked by the change of shade, produced by the drooping of their sensitive petioles.
At five miles we observed a new melaleuca, similar to the one I had remarked when to the north with Joseph, growing on the skirts of the flats, but the shrubs for the most part consisted of hakea and mimosae with geum and many other minor plants. For a time the ridges were smooth on their sides, and a quantity of young green grass was springing up on them.
Mimosae and Aarren baume of a gigantic size, palms, wild coffee-trees, orchidaen, parasites and creepers, blossoms and flowers, without end; birds of the most brilliant plumage, immense butterflies, and sparkling insects, flying in swarms from blossom to blossom, from branch to branch.
They were tastefully distributed amongst drooping acacias and casuarinae; some resembled bowers under yellow fragrant mimosae; some were isolated under the deeper shades of casuarinae; while others were placed more socially, three or four together, fronting to one and the same hearth.
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