Districts Of This
Description You Will Find In Great Sweeps Of Kama Country For
Example, And In The Rich Low Regions Up To The Base Of The Sierra
Del Cristal And The Rumby Range.
You often hear the utter lifelessness of mangrove-swamps commented
on; why I do not know, for they are fairly heavily stocked with
fauna, though the species are comparatively few.
There are the
crocodiles, more of them than any one wants; there are quantities of
flies, particularly the big silent mangrove-fly which lays an egg in
you under the skin; the egg becomes a maggot and stays there until
it feels fit to enter into external life. Then there are "slimy
things that crawl with legs upon a slimy sea," and any quantity of
hopping mud-fish, and crabs, and a certain mollusc, and in the water
various kinds of cat-fish. Birdless they are save for the flocks of
gray parrots that pass over them at evening, hoarsely squarking; and
save for this squarking of the parrots the swamps are silent all the
day, at least during the dry season; in the wet season there is no
silence night or day in West Africa, but that roar of the descending
deluge of rain that is more monotonous and more gloomy than any
silence can be. In the morning you do not hear the long, low,
mellow whistle of the plantain-eaters calling up the dawn, nor in
the evening the clock-bird nor the Handel-Festival-sized choruses of
frogs, or the crickets, that carry on their vesper controversy of
"she did" - "she didn't" so fiercely on hard land.
But the mangrove-swamp follows the general rule for West Africa, and
night in it is noisier than the day. After dark it is full of
noises; grunts from I know not what, splashes from jumping fish, the
peculiar whirr of rushing crabs, and quaint creaking and groaning
sounds from the trees; and - above all in eeriness - the strange whine
and sighing cough of crocodiles.
Great regions of mangrove-swamps are a characteristic feature of the
West African Coast. The first of these lies north of Sierra Leone;
then they occur, but of smaller dimensions - just fringes of river-
outfalls - until you get to Lagos, when you strike the greatest of
them all: - the swamps of the Niger outfalls (about twenty-three
rivers in all) and of the Sombreiro, New Calabar, Bonny, San
Antonio, Opobo (false and true), Kwoibo, Old Calabar (with the Cross
Akwayafe Qwa Rivers) and Rio del Rey Rivers. The whole of this
great stretch of coast is a mangrove-swamp, each river silently
rolling down its great mass of mud-laden waters and constituting
each in itself a very pretty problem to the navigator by its network
of intercommunicating creeks, and the sand and mud bar which it
forms off its entrance by dropping its heaviest mud; its lighter mud
is carried out beyond its bar and makes the nasty-smelling brown
soup of the South Atlantic Ocean, with froth floating in lines and
patches on it, for miles to seaward.
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