Shortly We Came Out On Stumbly Hills, Mostly
Rock, Very Dry, Grown With Cactus And Discouraged Desiccated
Thorn Scrub.
Here the sun reflected powerfully and the bearers
began to flag.
Then suddenly, without warning, we pitched over a little rise to
the river.
No more marvellous contrast could have been devised. From the
blasted barren scrub country we plunged into the lush jungle. It
was not a very wide jungle, but it was sufficient. The trees were
large and variegated, reaching to a high and spacious upper story
above the ground tangle. From the massive limbs hung vines,
festooned and looped like great serpents. Through this upper
corridor flitted birds of bright hue or striking variegation. We
did not know many of them by name, nor did we desire to; but were
content with the impression of vivid flashing movement and
colour. Various monkeys swung, leaped and galloped slowly away
before our advance; pausing to look back at us curiously, the
ruffs of fur standing out all around their little black faces.
The lower half of the forest jungle, however, had no spaciousness
at all, but a certain breathless intimacy. Great leaved plants as
tall as little trees, and trees as small as big plants, bound
together by vines, made up the "deep impenetrable jungle" of our
childhood imagining. Here were rustlings, sudden scurryings,
half-caught glimpses, once or twice a crash as some greater
animal made off. Here and there through the thicket wandered well
beaten trails, wide, but low, so that to follow them one would
have to bend double. These were the paths of rhinoceroses. The
air smelt warm and moist and earthy, like the odour of a
greenhouse.
We skirted this jungle until it gave way to let the plain down to
the river. Then, in an open grove of acacias, and fairly on the
river's bank, we pitched our tents.
These acacia trees were very noble big chaps, with many branches
and a thick shade. In their season they are wonderfully blossomed
with white, with yellow, sometimes even with vivid red flowers.
Beneath them was only a small matter of ferns to clear away.
Before us the sodded bank rounded off ten feet the river itself.
At this point far up in its youth it was a friendly river. Its
noble width ran over shallows of yellow sand or of small pebbles.
Save for unexpected deep holes one could wade across it anywhere.
Yet it was very wide, with still reaches of water, with islands
of gigantic papyrus, with sand bars dividing the current, and
with always the vista for a greater or lesser distance down
through the jungle along its banks. From our canvas chairs we
could look through on one side to the arid country, and on the
other to this tropical wonderland.
Yes, at this point in its youth it was indeed a friendly river in
every sense of the word. There are three reasons, ordinarily, why
one cannot bathe in the African rivers.
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