The mode by which tribes armed with bows and arrows carry on warfare, or defend themselves, is by ambuscade.

They never come out in open fight, but wait for the enemy ensconced behind trees, or in the long grass of the country, and shoot at him unawares.
Consequently, if men come against them with firearms, when, as is usually the case, the long grass is all burned off, the tribe attacked are as helpless as a wooden ship, possessing only signal guns, would be before an iron-clad steamer.

The time of year selected for this kind of warfare is nearly always that in which the grass is actually burnt off, or is so dry as readily to take fire.

The dry grass in Africa looks more like ripe English wheat late in the autumn, than anything else we can compare it to.

Let us imagine an English village standing in a field of this sort, bounded only by the horizon, and enemies setting fire to a line of a mile or two, by running along with bunches of burning straw in their hands, touching here and there the inflammable material,--the wind blowing towards the doomed village--the inhabitants with only one or two old muskets, but ten to one no powder,--the long line of flames, leaping thirty feet into the air with dense masses of black smoke--and pieces of charred grass falling down in showers.