It Is Still Less Pleasant, However,
Going Up The Other Side Of The Ravine When You Have Got Through Your
Swamp.
You have to fight your way upwards among rough rocks,
through this hard tough network of stems; and it took it out of all
of us except the Fans.
These narrow shaded swamps gave us a world of trouble and took up a
good deal of time. Sometimes the leader of the party would make
three or four attempts before he found a ford, going on until the
black, batterlike ooze came up round his neck, and then turning back
and trying in another place; while the rest of the party sat upon
the bank until the ford was found, feeling it was unnecessary to
throw away human life, and that the more men there were paddling
about in that swamp, the more chance there was that a hole in the
bottom of it would be found; and when a hole is found, the
discoverer is liable to leave his bones in it. If I happened to be
in front, the duty of finding the ford fell on me; for none of us
after leaving Efoua knew the swamps personally. I was too
frightened of the Fan, and too nervous and uncertain of the stuff my
other men were made of, to dare show the white feather at anything
that turned up. The Fan took my conduct as a matter of course,
never having travelled with white men before, or learnt the way some
of them require carrying over swamps and rivers and so on.
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