Forest and river were absolutely silent, but there was a
pleasant chatter and laughter from the black crew and passengers
away forward, that made the Mové seem an island of life
in a land of death. I retired into my cabin, so as to get under
the mosquito curtains to write ; and one by one I heard my
companions come into the saloon adjacent, and say to the
watchman : “ Y ou sabe six o’clock ? When them long arm
catch them place, and them short arm catch them place, you
call me in the morning time.” Exit from saloon— silence
then : “ You sabe five o’clock ? When them long arm catch
them place, and them short arm catch them place, you call me
in the morning time.” Exit— silence— then “ You sabe halfpast
five o’clock ? When them long arm— ” Oh, if I were a
watchman ! Anyhow, that five o’clocker will have the whole
ship’s company roused in the morning time.
June -]th.— Every one called in the morning time by the reflex
row from the rousing of the five o’clocker. Glorious morning.
The scene the reversal of that of last night. The forest to the
east shows a deep blue-purple, mounted on a background thàt
changes as you watch it from daffodil and amethyst to rose-
pink, as the sun comes up through the night mists. The
moon sinks down among them, her pale face flushing crimson
as she goes ; and the yellow-gold sunshine comes, glorifying
the forest and gilding the great sweep of tufted papyrus growing
alongside the bank ; and the mist vanishes, little white
flecks of it lingêring among the water reeds and lying in the
dark shadows of the forest stems. The air is full of the long,
soft, rich notes of the plaintive warblers, and the uproar consequent
upon the Mové taking on fuel wood, which comes alongside
in canoe loads from the Fallaban.
Père Steinitz and Mr. Woods are busy preparing their
respective canoes for their run to Fernán Vaz through the
creek. Their canoes are very fine ones, with a remarkably
clean run aft. The Père’s is quite the travelling canoe, with a
little stage of bamboo aft, covered with a hood of palm thatch,
under which you can make yourself quite comfortable, and
keep yourself and your possessions dry, unless something desperate
comes on in the way of rain.
By 10.25 we have got all our wood aboard, and run off up
river full speed. The river seems broader above the Fallabar,
but this is mainly on account of its being temporarily unencumbered
with islands. A good deal of the bank we have
passed by since leaving Nazareth Bay on the south side has
been island shore, with a channel between the islands and the
true south bank.
The day soon grew dull, and looked threatening, after the
delusive manner of the dry season. The climbing plants are
finer here than I have ever before seen them. They form
great veils and curtains between and over the trees, often
hanging so straight and flat,, in stretches of twenty to forty
| feet or so wide, and thirty to sixty or seventy feet high, that
it seems incredible that no human hand has trained or clipped
t em into their perfect forms. Sometimes these curtains are
. ecorated with large bell-shaped, bright-coloured flowers, sometimes
with delicate sprays of white blossoms. This forest is
beyond all my expectations of tropical luxuriance and beauty,
and it is a thing of another world to the forest of the Upper
Calabar, which, beautiful as it is, is a sad dowdy to this,
IThere you certainly get a great sense of grimness and
vastness; here you have an equal grimness and vastness
with the addition of superb colour. This-forest is a Cleopatra
to which Calabar is but a Quaker. Not only does this forest
depend on flowers for its illumination, for'there are many
kinds of trees having their young shoots, crimson, brown-
pink, and creamy yellow: added to this there is also
the relieving aspect of the prevailing fashion among West
. African trees of wearing the trunk white with here and there
upon it splashes of pale pink lichen, and vermilion-red fungus
which alone is sufficient to prevent the great mass of vegfta-
tion from being a monotony in green.
I All day long we steam past ever-varying scenes of loveliness
i ! r = ^ tSare ever different. Doubtless it is wrong tIo c aHll yet the effecty1T J
feTas7uroferiffe°rdd°KdeSCribe the SC6nery °f the Ogowd.
BBeeeetthhoovveenn eevveerr wwrroLte -• *2th78 ^rT7 paT,SS lon.as aannFy ssyynm phony
and returning Th the parts changing, interweaving,
and returning There are leit motifs here in it, too See the
papyrus ahead » and you know when you get * 2 2 o fn y o a