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The whole brow and sides of the hill were covered with gigantic grass-huts, neatly thatched and fenced all round with the tall, yellow reeds of the tiger-grass, while, within the enclosures, the lines of huts were joined together or partitioned off into courts, with the walls of the same grass.
Wild boars abound in the tall tiger-grass of the Shikobabad district and the silence of the gloaming is broken by the shouting of natives driving them out of their cane-patches, where, if not looked after pretty sharply, they do considerable damage in the night.
The king, a good-looking, well-figured, tall young man of twenty-five, was sitting on a red blanket spread upon a square platform of royal grass, encased in tiger-grass reeds, scrupulously well dressed in a new mbugu. The hair of his head was cut short, excepting on the top, where it was combed up into a high ridge, running from stem to stern like a cockscomb.
A little farther out from the base of the mountains, however, and we come upon wild figs, pomegranates, and other indigenous evidences of Eastern soil; and by and by our path almost becomes a tunnel, burrowing through a wealth of tiger-grass twenty feet high.
There were a score of varieties of the larger kind of trees, whose far-extending branches embraced across the narrow but swift river. The depressions of the valley and the immediate neighbourhood of the river were choked with young forests of tiger-grass and stiff reeds.
The whole brow and sides of the hill on which we stood were covered with gigantic grass huts, thatched as neatly as so many heads dressed by a London barber, and fenced all round with the tall yellow reeds of the common Uganda tiger-grass; whilst within the enclosure, the lines of huts were joined together, or partitioned off into courts, with walls of the same grass.
From dreary, barren dasht, and stony wastes, to densely wooded mountains, jungle-covered plains, tall, luxurious tiger-grass, and beyond all this the shimmering background of the sea is a big change to find but little more than a day's march apart. We are both captivated by the change, and agree that the Caspian slope is the only part of Persia fit to look at.
A large cleared space divided the queen's residence from her Kamraviona's. The outer enclosures and courts were fenced with tiger-grass; and the huts, though neither so numerous nor so large, were constructed after the same fashion as the king's. Guards also kept the doors, on which large bells were hung to give alarm, and officers in waiting watched the throne-rooms.
On the north, just behind the house, winds a black quagmire, a sinuous hollow, which in its deepest parts always contains water the muddy home of the brake-and-rush-loving "kiboko" or hippopotamus. Its banks, crowded with dwarf fan-palm, tall water-reeds, acacias, and tiger-grass, afford shelter to numerous aquatic birds, pelicans, &c.
Surely the sight of the dripping woods enveloped in opaque mist, of the inundated country with lengthy swathes of tiger-grass laid low by the turbid flood, of mounds of decaying trees and canes, of the swollen river and the weeping sky, was enough to engender the mukunguru! The well-used khambi, and the heaps of filth surrounding it, were enough to create a cholera!
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