The Somerset press. [volume] (Somerset, Ohio) 1873-1977, 1874-04-03
MISCELLANY.
African Scenery-A Magnificent
Country.


The British troops in Ashantee GER
tainly can behold some charming sights.
Here is picture of African scenery from
the correspondent of the London Daily
News:
"When Lieutenants Richmond and
Woodgate went up with their company
to build a redoubt, the thickness of the
underground in the bush forbade any
view whatever. By persistent hacking
at this underground, by telling the
smaller trees and keeping up perpetual
fires, they cleared considerable space
upon the crest, and exposed a charming
view. On either side rose loftier hills,
clothed in green from base to summit.-
Very far of, in the misty distance, be-
yond Coomassie, is a faint shadow of
mountains. The level between, through
which lies our road, is beheld through
breaks of foliage exactly like that affec-
toned by the earliest of Italian painters.
Giorgione might have studied his tree
effects from this spot. The plain lies
misty and vague, its tones of delicate
verdure fading in the distance into a
golden haze. High above the forest lev
el uprise the pale green crowns of cotton
trees, disdainful of lower growths.-
Creepers drop like brown waterfall
down the trunks. Great ruffs of fern
encircle their branches or hang their
leaves like stag horns from the topmost
boughs A few trees bear crown of
blossom, scarlet or pink, but not to'Elatch
i'll mass or beauty the brilliant garden of
Fanteeland. Animal hfe-for all we see
Of it--might not exist at all in this
country. We hear birds and beasts
sometimes; occasionally We see parrots
fly overhead, at distance to skim the
tallest boughs; but few Of US have be-
held a creataresthatzransao silies,s except
the insects. I mediate short digres.
sion on the creeping things of Africa in
some pause of the campaign. 1t is suiH-
cient now to say that no country in the
world can compare withthis in variety.
and ntfnBerso of III insects.,'
Another correspondent writes:
"A little stream goes clean. and clear
over some shingly pebbles, and bends in
and out below the road among foliage
rich enough to deck, not crowded enough
to conceal it. Immediately after cross
ing, one of the richest banks of flowers
which have here seen, presented itself;
the chief feature being gay plant,
whose name I do not know, very
like cowslip in the actual flower, but
with a bright white leaf standing out as
if part of the flower itself behind each
fiower-1ead, and the plant growing in
luxuriant masses on stems six or seven
feet high; the whole intertwined with
ferns and creepers innumerable. The
bank had curious loot-roots stood out
from it as from the base of fallen tree,
and by the irregularity and ruggedness
they gave to it added much to its pic
turesqueness and beauty. Yet the whole
appearance of bank, and not of huge
root, was there, from the completeness
with which Nature had decked every
nook and Granny. was rather puzzled,
and went round behind it to find plainly
enough, stretched along behind it for,
perhaps, sixty yards, the quite rotten
carcass of an old forest king-now no
longer, except by its mere shape, distin-
guishable from a mound of rich earth,
and covered all over with rich, high
growing moss and ferns and plants Of all
kinds -