They Were Still Sitting On The
Hillock Where I Had Left Them.
Buea showed from this elevation
well.
The guard house and the mission house, like little houses in
a picture, and the make of the ground on which Buea station stands,
came out distinctly as a ledge or terrace, extending for miles
N.N.E. and S.S.W. This ledge is a strange-looking piece of country,
covered with low bush, out of which rise great, isolated, white-
stemmed cotton trees. Below, and beyond this is a denser band of
high forest, and again below this stretches the vast mangrove-swamp
fringing the estuary of the Cameroons, Mungo, and Bimbia rivers. It
is a very noble view, giving one an example of the peculiar beauty
one oft-times gets in this West African scenery, namely colossal
sweeps of colour. The mangrove-swamps looked to-day like a vast
damson-coloured carpet threaded with silver where the waterways ran.
It reminded me of a scene I saw once near Cabinda, when on climbing
to the top of a hill I suddenly found myself looking down on a sheet
of violet pink more than a mile long and half a mile wide. This was
caused by a climbing plant having taken possession of a valley full
of trees, whose tops it had reached and then spread and interlaced
itself over them, to burst into profuse glorious laburnum-shaped
bunches of flowers.
After taking some careful compass bearings for future use regarding
the Rumby and Omon range of mountains, which were clearly visible
and which look fascinatingly like my beloved Sierra del Cristal, I
turned my face to the wall of Mungo, and continued the ascent.
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