We Resolved To Make This Charming Spot Our Head-Quarters For
The Present, As We Had Everything To Be Desired - Water, Game, Etc.
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Close at hand, and, from the absence of timber, no blacks would be able to
steal upon us unperceived.
Leaving the pilot and one man in charge of the boat, we trudged along
through the high grass, which reached to our middles, and was dripping with
moisture from a shower that had fallen during the night; and, after a
tedious walk, reached the edge of the scrub. It was thicker than anything
we had encountered before, the density of the foliage totally excluding the
sun, and giving rise to a dank humid odour that struck a chill to the heart
directly you entered. We wound along the path, or rather track, that the
blacks had made, with the greatest difficulty. It was all very well for
the troopers, who had stripped, but our clothes hitched up on a thorn at
every other step. One of our most provoking enemies was the lawyer vine, a
kind of rattan enclosed in a rough husk, covered with thousands of crooked
prickles. These, with their outer covering, are about an inch and a
quarter in diameter, and extend to an enormous distance, running up to the
tops of lofty trees, and from thence either descending or pushing onward,
or festooning themselves from stem to stem in graceful curves of
indescribable beauty. From the joints of the parent shoot are thrown out
little slender tendrils, no thicker than a wire, but of great length, and
as dangerously armed as their larger relation.
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