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A succession of knolls, all more or less ornamented with park-like trees, characterize the landscape, which slopes gradually down towards the west, and drains into the Albert N'yanza, which is about twenty miles distant. "The town of Masindi is, as usual throughout Unyoro, exceedingly neglected, and is composed of some thousand large beehive-shaped straw huts, without any arrangement or plan.

There was a sense of autumn in the air. Far off across the marsh I saw that the settlers had their wheat in symmetrical beehive-shaped stacks while mine stood in the shock, my sloping hillside slanting down to the marsh freckled with the shocks until it looked dark the almost sure sign of a bountiful crop. And as I looked at this scene of plenty, I sickened at it.

The cave was in a beehive-shaped pile of rocks standing on, or rather projecting from, a steep hillside. From the upper side it is easily approached, but to get at the mouth of the cave you have to step down, as it were, from the roof of the beehive on to a ledge of rock about six feet wide, below which there is a drop of ten or twelve feet.

The porters and soldiers were glad to leave the damp coast-land behind and get into drier country, but the ridges made travelling harder. They encamped in villages of beehive-shaped huts covered with bamboos and bast, and surrounded by mud walls.

I noted a row of straw beehives, beehive-shaped, beehives of the type long since condemned as inefficient by all progressive minds, and in the doctor's acre of grass a flock of two whole sheep was grazing, no doubt he'd taken them on account. Two men and one old woman made gestures of abject vassalage, and my uncle replied with a lordly gesture of his great motoring glove....

The whole country had been desolated by civil war, in which the companions of Abou Saood had taken a prominent part, and had carried off a great number of the women. Kisoona was a poor straggling place in the centre of the forest; but although the beehive-shaped huts were far apart, there was the usual amount of filth and ashes that disgrace the villages of Unyoro.

There was no mistake about it. On entering the hut I found the old man and his chief wife sitting side by side on a bench of earth strewed over with grass, and partitioned like stalls for sleeping apartments, whilst in front of them were placed numerous wooden pots of milk, and hanging from the poles that supported the beehive-shaped hut, a large collection of bows six feet in length, whilst below them were tied an even larger collection of spears, intermixed with a goodly assortment of heavy-headed assages.

It paid you back in its own way a mighty good way, too and it grew to be a part of you, like your wife, if you weren't a poor, lone, seafaring slob without one. Of course, it wasn't much of a house, being a sort of beehive-shaped concern with a thatched roof a foot thick and open all round the sides when the cocoanut curtains was hysted.

With a two hours' halt at midday they marched on over hill and dale, passing many villages of beehive-shaped huts. As they came the inhabitants of these places deserted them and fled, crying "Nomkubulwana! Nomkubulwana!" It was evident to Rachel that the tale of the death of the Isanuzi had preceded her, and they feared lest, should they cross her path, her fate would be their fate.

In the little valleys were gardens, showing up like a chessboard pattern in neat patches of green, red, and brown, according to whether there was ripening millet, young maize, or new-turned mould. Halfway down the valley was a village of beehive-shaped huts, with an open space in the centre, adorned with one fine tree, under whose spreading branches they could see distinctly the forms of men.