the lines in its dark face, which betokened more of those
awesome slime lagoons that we had seen enough of at close
quarters.
About four o’clock we struck some more plantations, and
passing through these, came to a path running north-east,
down which we went. I must say the forest scenery here was
superbly lovely. Along this mountain side cliff to the mangrove
swamp the sun could reach the soil, owing to the
steepness and abruptness and the changes of curves of the
ground ; while the soft steamy air which came up off the swamp
swathed everything, and although unpleasantly strong in smell
to us, was yet evidently highly agreeable to the vegetation.
Lovely wine palms and rafia palms, looking as if they had been
grown under glass, so deliciously green and profuse was their
feather-like foliage, intermingled with giant red woods, and lovely
dark glossy green lianes, blooming in wreaths and festoons of
white and mauve flowers, which gave a glorious wealth of
beauty and colour to the scene. Even the monotony of the
mangrove-belt alongside gave an additional charm to it, like
the frame round a picture.
As we passed on, the ridge turned N. and the mangrove
line narrowed between the hills. Our path now ran east and
more in the middle of the forest, and the cool shade was charm-
ing after the heat we had had earlier in the day. We crossed
a lovely little stream coming down the hillside in a cascade;
and then our path plunged into a beautiful valley. We hacl
glimpses through the trees of an amphitheatre of blue mist-
veiled mountains coming down in a crescent before us, and
on all sides, save due west where the mangrove-swamp came
in. Never shall I forget the exceeding beauty of that valley,
the foliage of the trees round us, the delicate wreaths and
festoons of climbing plants, the graceful delicate plumes of
the palm trees, interlacing among each other, and showing
through all a background of soft, pale, purple-blue mountains
and forest, not really far away, as the practised eye knew,
but only made to look so by the mist, which has this trick
of giving suggestion of immense space without destroying the
beauty of detail. Those African misty forests have the same
marvellous distinctive quality that Turner gives one in his
greatest pictures. I am no artist, so I do not know exactly
what it is, but I see it is there. I luxuriated in the exquisite
beauty of that valley, little thinking or knowing what
there was in it besides beauty, as Allah “ in mercy hid the
book of fate.” On we went among the ferns and flowers
until we met a swamp, a different kind of swamp to those we
had heretofore met, save the little one last mentioned. This
one was much larger, and a gem of beauty; but we had to
cross it. It was completely furnished with characteristic flora.
Fortunately when we got to its edge we saw a woman
crossing before us, but unfortunately she did not take a
fancy to our appearance, and instead of staying and having a
chat about the state of the roads, and the shortest way to
N’dorko, she bolted away across the swamp. I noticed
she carefully took a course, not the shortest, although that
course immersed her to her arm-pits. In we went after
her, and when things were getting unpleasantly deep, and
feeling highly uncertain under foot, we found there was a
great log of a tree under the water which, as we had
seen the lady’s care at this point, we deemed it advisable to
walk on. All of us save one, need I say that one was myself,
effected this with safety. As for me, when I was at the
beginning of the submerged bridge, and busily laying about in
my mind for a definite opinion as to whether it was better
to walk on a slippy tree trunk bridge you could see, or on
one you could not, I was hurled off by that inexorable fate that
demands of me a personal acquaintance with fluvial and
paludial ground deposits ; whereupon I took a header, and am
thereby able to inform the world, that there is between
fifteen and twenty feet of water each side of that log. I conscientiously
went in on one side, and came up on the other.
The log, I conjecture, is dum or ebony, and it is some fifty
feet long ; anyhow it is some sort of wood that won’t float. I
really cannot be expected, by the most exigent of scientific
friends, to go botanising under water without a proper outfit.
Gray Shirt says it is a bridge across an under-swamp river.
Having survived this and reached the opposite bank, we
shortly fell in with a party of men and women, who were
taking, they said, a parcel of rubber to Holty’s. They told us