United States or Mali ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


We travelled about twelve miles south by west to latitude 16 degrees 47 minutes; at first over an almost uninterrupted box-flat, full of melon-holes, and with many small holes in the ground, which caused our horses and cattle to stumble at almost every step. The dry melon-holes were covered with dead Paludinas, with shells of a large crab, and of the fresh water turtle.

The so-called "snails" are really quite different from each other, some, the paludinas, being large, thick-striped shells, while the limnaeas are thin, more delicately made, some with fine, pointed spiral tops, and others in which the top seems to have been absorbed in the lower stories.

There are eight varieties of these limnaeas alone, and six more elegant shells of much the same appearance, but of a different race. The minute elegance of many of these shells is very striking. Tiny physas and succineas, no larger than shot, live among big paludinas as large as a garden snail, while all sizes of the larger varieties are found, from microscopic atoms to the perfect adult.

It is remarkable how readily the tea dispels every feeling of fatigue, without the slightest subsequent injury of health. Paludinas and Unios were very frequent in the water-holes.

The pools and lagoons contain Unios, Paludinas, and the lanceolate and oval Limnaeas. Fine dry weather has set in; the northerly breeze is still very regular; but the mornings, from eight to eleven, are very hot. A few mosquitoes have made their appearance, probably in consequence of the late rains.