If It Is Near Evening Time Now, You Can
Watch It Becoming Incarnate, Creeping And Crawling And Gliding Out
From
The side creeks and between the mangrove-roots, laying itself
upon the river, stretching and rolling in a kind of
Grim play, and
finally crawling up the side of the ship to come on board and leave
its cloak of moisture that grows green mildew in a few hours over
all. Noise you will not be much troubled with: there is only that
rain, a sound I have known make men who are sick with fever well-
nigh mad, and now and again the depressing cry of the curlews which
abound here. This combination is such that after six or eight hours
of it you will be thankful to hear your shipmates start to work the
winch. I take it you are hard up when you relish a winch. And you
will say - let your previous experience of the world be what it may -
Good Heavens, what a place!
Five times have I been now in Bonny River and I like it. You always
do get to like it if you live long enough to allow the strange
fascination of the place to get a hold on you; but when I first
entered it, on a ship commanded by Captain Murray in '93, in the wet
season, i.e. in August, in spite of the confidence I had by this
time acquired in his skill and knowledge of the West Coast, a sense
of horror seized on me as I gazed upon the scene, and I said to the
old Coaster who then had charge of my education, "Good Heavens!
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