Of Course It Was Hard To Live Up To These Ideals, And I Do Not Pretend To Have Succeeded, Or Rather That I Should Have Succeeded Had The Real Strain Been Put On Me.

But to return to that gorilla-land forest.

All the rivers we crossed on the first, second, and third day I was told went into one or other of the branches of the Ogowe, showing that the long slope of land between the Ogowe and the Rembwe is towards the Ogowe. The stone of which the mountains were composed was that same hard black rock that I had found on the Sierra del Cristal, by the Ogowe rapids; only hereabouts there was not amongst it those great masses of white quartz, which are so prominent a feature from Talagouga upwards in the Ogowe valley; neither were the mountains anything like so high, but they had the same abruptness of shape. They look like very old parts of the same range worn down to stumps by the disintegrating forces of the torrential rain and sun, and the dense forest growing on them. Frost of course they had not been subject to, but rocks, I noticed, were often being somewhat similarly split by rootlets having got into some tiny crevice, and by gradual growth enlarged it to a crack.

Of our troubles among the timber falls on these mountains I have already spoken; and these were at their worst between Efoua and Egaja. I had suffered a good deal from thirst that day, unboiled water being my ibet and we were all very nearly tired out with the athletic sports since leaving Efoua.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 283 of 705
Words from 78466 to 78740 of 194943