The vegetation is very varied in the rock-strewn sides of the ravines, in the granitic and quartzose regions it is very bare and weak. But where the plateau level has been less disturbed, the thick maxinde grass (x = sh) shows the richness of the soil; while the carefully tended farms near the towns, beautiful with the rich green of the ground-nut, thickly tangled with sweet-potatoes, or jungled with cassava bushes, show what can be done with the soil, by clearing and a little scratching with the hoe.
In the broader valleys, where the streams are smaller, or have done less destruction to the country, grows the giant diàdia grass, the stems often attaining two and a half inches in circumference and a mean height of fifteen feet; there may be found some of the richest soil in the world. Where the diàdia has been exists the wildest luxuriance of vegetation;