Like Most Things That Float In These
Parts, It Usually Settles On A Sandbank, And Then Grows In Much The
Same way as our couch grass grows on land in England, so as to form
a network, which catches for
Its adopted sandbank all sorts of
floating debris; so the sandbank comes up in the world. The waters
of the wet season when they rise drown off the grass; but when they
fall, up it comes again from the root, and so gradually the sandbank
becomes an island and persuades real trees and shrubs to come and
grow on it, and its future is then secured.
We skirt alongside a great young island of this class; the sword
grass some ten or fifteen feet high. It has not got any trees on it
yet, but by next season or so it doubtless will have. The grass is
stabbled down into paths by hippos, and just as I have realised who
are the road-makers, they appear in person. One immense fellow,
hearing us, stands up and shows himself about six feet from us in
the grass, gazes calmly, and then yawns a yawn a yard wide and
grunts his news to his companions, some of whom - there is evidently
a large herd - get up and stroll towards us with all the flowing
grace of Pantechnicon vans in motion. We put our helm paddles hard
a starboard and leave that bank.
Our hasty trip across to the bank of the island on the other side
being accomplished, we, in search of seclusion and in the hope that
out of sight would mean out of mind to hippos, shot down a narrow
channel between semi-island sandbanks, and those sandbanks, if you
please, are covered with specimens - as fine a set of specimens as
you could wish for - of the West African crocodile. These
interesting animals are also having their siestas, lying sprawling
in all directions on the sand, with their mouths wide open. One
immense old lady has a family of lively young crocodiles running
over her, evidently playing like a lot of kittens. The heavy musky
smell they give off is most repulsive, but we do not rise up and
make a row about this, because we feel hopelessly in the wrong in
intruding into these family scenes uninvited, and so apologetically
pole ourselves along rapidly, not even singing. The pace the canoe
goes down that channel would be a wonder to Henley Regatta. When
out of ear-shot I ask Pagan whether there are many gorillas,
elephants, or bush cows round here. "Plenty too much," says he; and
it occurs to me that the corn-fields are growing golden green away
in England; and soon there rises up in my mental vision a picture
that fascinated my youth in the Fliegende Blatter, representing
"Friedrich Gerstaeker auf der Reise." That gallant man is depicted
tramping on a serpent, new to M. Boulenger, while he attempts to
club, with the butt end of his gun, a most lively savage who,
accompanied by a bison, is attacking him in front. A terrific and
obviously enthusiastic crocodile is grabbing the tail of the
explorer's coat, and the explorer says "Hurrah! das gibt wieder
einen prachtigen Artikel fur Die Allgemeine Zeitung." I do not know
where in the world Gerstaeker was at the time, but I should fancy
hereabouts. My vigorous and lively conscience also reminds me that
the last words a most distinguished and valued scientific friend had
said to me before I left home was, "Always take measurements, Miss
Kingsley, and always take them from the adult male." I know I have
neglected opportunities of carrying this commission out on both
those banks, but I do not feel like going back. Besides, the men
would not like it, and I have mislaid my yard measure.
The extent of water, dotted with sandbanks and islands in all
directions, here is great, and seems to be fringed uniformly by low
swampy land, beyond which, to the north, rounded lumps of hills show
blue. On one of the islands is a little white house which I am told
was once occupied by a black trader for John Holt. It looks a
desolate place for any man to live in, and the way the crocodiles
and hippo must have come up on the garden ground in the evening time
could not have enhanced its charms to the average cautious man. My
men say, "No man live for that place now." The factory, I believe,
has been, for some trade reason, abandoned. Behind it is a great
clump of dark-coloured trees. The rest of the island is now covered
with hippo grass looking like a beautifully kept lawn. We lie up
for a short rest at another island, also a weird spot in its way,
for it is covered with a grove of only one kind of tree, which has a
twisted, contorted, gray-white trunk and dull, lifeless-looking,
green, hard foliage.
I learn that these good people, to make topographical confusion
worse confounded, call a river by one name when you are going up it,
and by another when you are coming down; just as if you called the
Thames the London when you were going up, and the Greenwich when you
were coming down. The banks all round this lake or broad, seem all
light-coloured sand and clay. We pass out of it into a channel.
Current flowing north. As we are entering the channel between banks
of grass-overgrown sand, a superb white crane is seen standing on
the sand edge to the left. Gray Shirt attempts to get a shot at it,
but it - alarmed at our unusual appearance - raises itself up with one
of those graceful preliminary curtseys, and after one or two
preliminary flaps spreads its broad wings and sweeps away, with its
long legs trailing behind it like a thing on a Japanese screen.
The river into which we ran zigzags about, and then takes a course
S.S.E. It is studded with islands slightly higher than those we
have passed, and thinly clad with forest.
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