The
Adooma From Kembe Island Especially Drew My Attention To This Shrub,
Telling Me His People Who Worked The Rapids
Always regarded it with
an affectionate veneration; for he said it was the only thing that
helped a man when
His canoe got thrown over in the dreaded Alemba,
for its long tough branches swimming in, or close to, the water are
veritable life lines, and his best chance; a chance which must have
failed some poor fellow, whose knife and leopard-skin belt we found
wedged in among the rocks on Kondo Kondo. The main part of the
island is sand, with slabs and tables of polished rock sticking up
through it; and in between the rocks grew in thousands most
beautiful lilies, their white flowers having a very strong scent of
vanilla and their bright light-green leaves looking very lovely on
the glistening pale sand among the black-gray rock. How they stand
the long submersion they must undergo I do not know; the natives
tell me they begin to spring up as soon as ever the water falls and
leaves the island exposed; that they very soon grow up and flower,
and keep on flowering until the Ogowe comes down again and rides
roughshod over Kondo Kondo for months. While the men were making
their fire I went across the island to see the great Alemba rapid,
of which I had heard so much, that lay between it and the north
bank. Nobler pens than mine must sing its glory and its grandeur.
Its face was like nothing I have seen before. Its voice was like
nothing I have heard. Those other rapids are not to be compared to
it; they are wild, headstrong, and malignant enough, but the Alemba
is not as they. It does not struggle, and writhe, and brawl among
the rocks, but comes in a majestic springing dance, a stretch of
waltzing foam, triumphant.
The beauty of the night on Kondo Kondo was superb; the sun went down
and the afterglow flashed across the sky in crimson, purple, and
gold, leaving it a deep violet-purple, with the great stars hanging
in it like moons, until the moon herself arose, lighting the sky
long before she sent her beams down on us in this valley. As she
rose, the mountains hiding her face grew harder and harder in
outline, and deeper and deeper black, while those opposite were just
enough illumined to let one see the wefts and floating veils of
blue-white mist upon them, and when at last, and for a short time
only, she shone full down on the savage foam of the Alemba, she
turned it into a soft silver mist. Around, on all sides, flickered
the fire-flies, who had come to see if our fire was not a big
relation of their own, and they were the sole representatives, with
ourselves, of animal life. When the moon had gone, the sky, still
lit by the stars, seeming indeed to be in itself lambent, was very
lovely, but it shared none of its light with us, and we sat round
our fire surrounded by an utter darkness.
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