Our Second Day's March Was Infinitely Worse Than The First, For It
Lay Along A Series Of Abruptly Shaped Hills
With deep ravines
between them; each ravine had its swamp and each swamp its river.
This bit of country must
Be absolutely impassable for any human
being, black or white, except during the dry season. There were
representatives of the three chief forms of the West African bog.
The large deep swamps were best to deal with, because they make a
break in the forest, and the sun can come down on their surface and
bake a crust, over which you can go, if you go quickly. From
experience in Devonian bogs, I knew pace was our best chance, and I
fancy I earned one of my nicknames among the Fans on these. The
Fans went across all right with a rapid striding glide, but the
other men erred from excess of caution, and while hesitating as to
where was the next safe place to plant their feet, the place that
they were standing on went in with a glug. Moreover, they would
keep together, which was more than the crust would stand. The
portly Pagan and the Passenger gave us a fine job in one bog, by
sinking in close together. Some of us slashed off boughs of trees
and tore off handfuls of hard canna leaves, while others threw them
round the sinking victims to form a sort of raft, and then with the
aid of bush-rope, of course, they were hauled out.
The worst sort of swamp, and the most frequent hereabouts, is the
deep narrow one that has no crust on, because it is too much shaded
by the forest. The slopes of the ravines too are usually covered
with an undergrowth of shenja, beautiful beyond description, but
right bad to go through. I soon learnt to dread seeing the man in
front going down hill, or to find myself doing so, for it meant that
within the next half hour we should be battling through a patch of
shenja. I believe there are few effects that can compare with the
beauty of them, with the golden sunlight coming down through the
upper forest's branches on to their exquisitely shaped, hard, dark
green leaves, making them look as if they were sprinkled with golden
sequins. Their long green stalks, which support the leaves and bear
little bunches of crimson berries, take every graceful curve
imaginable, and the whole affair is free from insects; and when you
have said this, you have said all there is to say in favour of
shenja, for those long green stalks of theirs are as tough as
twisted wire, and the graceful curves go to the making of a net,
which rises round you shoulder high, and the hard green leaves when
lying on the ground are fearfully slippery. It is not nice going
down through them, particularly when Nature is so arranged that the
edge of the bank you are descending is a rock-wall ten or twelve
feet high with a swamp of unknown depth at its foot; this
arrangement was very frequent on the second and third day's marches,
and into these swamps the shenja seemed to want to send you head
first and get you suffocated.
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