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Updated: May 5, 2025
I never felt the atmosphere so steamy as on the low-lying lands of the Zambesi, and yet it was becoming cooler than it was on the highlands. We crossed the rivulets Kapopo and Ue, now running, but usually dry. There are great numbers of wild grape-vines growing in this quarter; indeed, they abound every where along the banks of the Zambesi.
Nor does he lose much; for if the borders on each side of the path are planted with grape-vines, peach and plum trees, flowers and shrubs, the very ground he walks on becomes part of their root pasturage. At the same time it must be admitted that the roots will also extend with depleting appetites into the land devoted to vegetables.
For long weary hours we wallowed till the welcome form of our host appeared, and we recommenced the pitching and stumbling of the dangerous return voyage of this, our pleasure trip. "For miles the tall, slender pine and cypress-trees festooned with moss and enormous Scuppernong grape-vines, were unbroken by a single clearing or a single shanty.
I exclaimed for the third or fourth time as we entered an alley festooned with trailing flowers and grape-vines from which the fruit hung in thick clusters. "All Quipai is a garden," said the abbé, proudly. And such fruit! Let him taste a chirimoya ma fille chèrie."
She is delighted with the notion that her "Baltimore belles" and the like can clamber against the house without being torn away every two or three years for paint. On the strength of this notion, she has already ordered a big lot of all sorts of herbs and creeping things, from grape-vines and English ivy to sweet-peas and passion-flowers. That's only one thing.
During the day my bungalow is infested with swarms of huge robber ants, that make a most determined onslaught on the raisins and sweetmeats, invading the boxes and lugging them off to their haunts among the grape-vines. A favorite occupation of the bul-buls is sitting on a twig just outside the bungalow and watching for the appearance of these ants dragging away raisins.
Along one side of the house, and protected by a stout locust paling overrun with grape-vines, lay the garden, where flowers and vegetables flourished contentedly side by side, the hollyhocks and tall white lilies, the hundred-leaved roses and scarlet poppies showing like gilded officers amidst the rank and file of sober esculents.
The vineyards are generally owned by rich proprietors, by whom they are farmed out to the laborer, who pays half the produce when the wine has been pressed; the government first taking its tenth. The grape-vines run along frame-work, raised four or five feet from the ground, so as to allow the cultivator room to weed the stalks beneath.
That is not a pleasant place, by any means. Several bad giants rendezvous there. Old Giants Lust, Pride, Persecution, Worldliness, Covetousness, and others make it a sort of headquarters. They never bother the grape-vines; it is only the pilgrims that they annoy. The soil is rocky and hard to subdue and cultivate.
Across the brook two small foot-bridges had been built, both of which were latticed and overgrown by luxuriant grape-vines, whose dark, green foliage was now intermingled with clusters of the rich purple fruit.
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