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In the old days, long ago, before the land was exploited and the forest turned into a hunting ground for rubber, the lovely head of the oryx would push aside the long green blades of the speargrass; then, bending her lips to the lips of the oryx gazing up at her from the water, she would drink, shattering the reflection into a thousand ripples.

They quickened their pace, the trees drew apart, and, suddenly, with theatrical effect, a park-like sward of land lay before them leading to a sheet of blue water reflecting tall feather-palms and waving speargrass, all domed over with blue, and burning in the bright, bright sunshine. "The Silent Pools!" cried Adams. "The very place where I saw the leopard chasing the antelope! Great Scott!

Something beneath the water had devoured the antelope; something beneath the water had dragged the leopard to its doom, and swish! a huge flail tore the speargrass to ribbons and sent Adams flying backward with the wind of its passage. Another foot and the crocodile's tail would have swept him to the fate of the antelope and leopard.

Or the thousands of tiny unassuming herbs which grew up with the growing speargrass, bringing with them pungent odours from the soil as from some deep- laid storehouse of precious spices.

Poole had ascended and the more distant ones, appeared to be flat, and covered with brush and speargrass. There was an appearance of water between the ranges, and they looked like islands in an immense lake. He did not think he could have been deceived by the effect of mirage; but felt satisfied, according to his own judgment, that he had seen a large body of water to the N.W. Mr.

Like a beautiful song in some tragic and gloomy opera, a regret of the God who created the hopeless forest, sheltered by the great n'sambya trees, they lie; pools of shadowy and tranquil water, broken by reflections of branches and mirroring speargrass ten feet high and fanlike fern fronds.

Here, you were confined to a quagmire by impervious underwood of prickly pear, penguin, and speargrass; and when we rode under the drooping branches of the trees, that the leaves might brush away the halo of musquittoes, flying ants, and other winged plagues that buzzed about our temples, we found, to our dismay, that we had made bad worse by the introduction of a whole colony of garapatos, or wood ticks, into our eyebrows and hair.

Adams burst through the long speargrass to see what was happening, and, standing on the boggy margin, holding the grasses aside, gazed.