Henry M. Stanley

“ Pressed backward to a perilous length they recover from the first blow, and dart their heads in furious waves forward, and the glory of the war between the forest and the storm is at its height. Legion after legion of clouds ride over the wind-tost crests, there is a crashing and roaring, a loud soughing and moaning, shrill screaming of squalls, and groaning of countless woods. There are mighty sweeps from the great tree-kings, as though mighty strokes were being dealt; there is a world-wide rustling of foliage, as though in gleeful approval of the vast strength of their sires ”

“ Like a rolling snowball, power, when once established, attracts and grows; an isolated snowdrop melts. Emin was the snowdrop, the Khalif of Khartoum was the growing snowball.
It is easy, therefore, to understand the motives of the officers, who are declared rebels, who have traitors and Mahdists among them to influence their councils, and to predict what the natural outcome will be. They will curry favour with the Khalif by betraying their would-be rescuers and their former Pasha and his white companions into his hands, and win honour and glory by so doing. ”

“ Probably a year had elapsed since the people had fled, and their settlements had been consumed with fire, for the banana plants were choked by the voracious undergrowth and wild plants, and the elephants had trampled through and through, and sported for months among the wasted groves, and over the crushed Musa plants, through phrynia flourishing two fathoms deep, and where the stumps of cut trees had sprouted and grown until their tufted tops were joined to one another in one great thick carpet of bush. ”

“ We might have been able to show the lake, with its tender blue colour, here broadening nobly, there enfolding with its sparkling white arms clusters of tropic isles, or projecting long silvery tongues of blazing water into the spacious meadowy flats, curving everywhere in rounded bays, or extending along flowing shore-lines, under the shadows of impending plateau walls, and flotillas of canoes gliding over its bright bosom to give it life, and broad green bands of marsh grasses, palms, plantains, waving crops of sugar-cane, and umbrageous globes of foliage, to give beauty to its borders. ”

“ The Pasha did so, and after a second’s hesitation, during which it was clear that she was measuring the strength of two wills, she walked out, taking the sweet fragrance and loveliness of her presence with her.
“After her, Mohammed! but if you strike her with even a feather, she shall become as a stranger to you until you reach Cairo. Let her scold on, man, even until she faints with weariness. Does a man like you fear wind? Be considerate with her for three or four days. She will come round, never fear.” ”

“ But if we were bitten and stung by pismires and numberless tribes of insects by day, which every one will confess is as bad as being whipped with nettles, the night had also its alarms, terrors, and anxieties. In the dead of night, when the entire caravan was wrapped in slumber, a series of explosions would wake every one. Some tree or another was nightly struck{93} by lightning, and there was a danger that half the camp might be mangled by the fall of one; the sound of the branches during a storm was like the roar of breakers, or the rolling of a surge on the shore. ”

“ He—the Maker who raised those eternal mountains and tapestried their slopes with the mosses, and lichens, and tender herbs, and divided them by myriads of watercourses for the melted snow to run into the fruitful valley, and caused that mighty, limitless forest to clothe it, and its foliage to shine with unfading lustre—surely intended that it should be reserved until the fulness of time for something higher than a nursery for birds and a store-place for reptiles. ”

“ Those who have read the pitiful tale of the rear column will no doubt be curious to know how we re-entered Fort Bodo, which was only garrisoned with fifty-nine rifles, after six months’ absence. With my heart filled with joy and gratitude I was escorted up the western avenue, glad men leaping around me like spaniels, the Doctor imparting the most cheery news; prosperous fields of corn on either hand, and goodly crops everywhere; fenced squares, a neat village, clean streets, and every one I met—white and black—in perfect health, except a few incurables. ”

“ If a great hawk-moth or a strange longicorn, or a typhlops be brought to him, he forthwith forgets the court-martial that is to decide his sentence, and seems to be indifferent whether he is to be summoned to be shot by his soldiery or to be strapped on his angarep to be deported as a prize to the Khalifa at Khartoum. When we learn all this about him, and begin to understand him, though wondering at these strange vagaries of human nature, we are only conscious that the man is worth every sacrifice on our part. ”

“ On the 30th we reached Bukoko in four hours’ easy travel, for we marched over a smooth graduated terrace formed by the debris rolled down the slopes of the snow mountain, and scoured by repeated falls of rain to a gentle slope, luxuriant with reed-grass, and wonderfully prolific in edibles, where cultivated. Here and there cropped out a monster boulder, half imbedded in the loam and gravelly soil, which had rolled and thundered wildly down when displaced by some landslip, or detached from its resting-place by a torrential shower. ”

“ If the Khalif is relentless, and his Donagla pursue us with that fierceness so characteristic of them, and the door to his mercy is closed, we can fall back upon the camp of the white men, and by apparent obedience disarm all suspicion, make use of them to find us a land of plenty, and suddenly possess ourselves of their arms and ammunition, and either send them adrift as beggars, or slay the whites and make their followers our slaves. ”

“ If we did not think it were a waste of labour we would not speak. Whither can they take the rubbish we have been obliged to carry up here? Will any one man undertake to carry one of those huge coffins a day’s march through the bush? The strongest man in the world would be killed under it. For whom are we doing it? For a set of thankless, heartless people, who profess God with their lips, and know nothing of Him or of the prophet Mohammed—blessed be his name! ”

“ About five miles off to the westward, or on our right hand, the forest, black as night, keeps company with us. We are seldom out of sight of the advancing capes and receding bays of the dark, eternal mass. On our left, in intimate neighbourhood, rise the mighty slopes, steeply receding upward into the greyish blue of an uncertain sky, and far away, in solemn lines, like a colossal battalion of mountains, is ranged the series between each of which are deep ravines, narrow and far-reaching recessions, formed by ceaselessly-murmuring streams. ”

“ Where the humus is deep we find a tall and stately forest, with an impervious underwood of young trees, bound together and sometimes altogether hidden by countless climbing vines and robust plants; where the humus is thinner, as near the foot of the range, dense crops of cane-grass, from ten to fifteen feet in height, flourish luxuriant and impenetrable. Every tree-stem has its green robe of soft moss, dripping with dew, and each tree-fern or horizontal branch has its orchids, or broad elephant-eared plant. ”

“ They have piled up branches, and have formed abattis of great trees, and they lie in wait behind with sheaves of poisoned arrows, wooden spears hardened in fire, and smeared with poison.
The primeval forest, that is that old growth untouched by man, and left since the earliest time to thrive and die, one age after another, is easily distinguishable from that part which at some time or another afforded shelter for man. ”

“ It became impressed on us as we travelled over these dry, waterless plains, with their nakedness scarcely hidden by dwarf acacia, and hardy euphorbias, that the forest people were utterly unfit to be taken out of their arboreal homes. Half of those who had accompanied us we had been obliged to leave behind, and yet there had been no want of either food or water. In the same manner the Somalis, Soudanese, Madis, or Baris, when taken into the forest, soon became joyless, dull, and moping, and died. And yet I have read in affectedly learned books that Africa was only fit for the Africans! ”

“ But as minute after minute adds more mass to the mist, and the fermenting Semliki Valley, with exhaustless power, pours forth army after army, which hasten to join the upper ranks extended motionless along the slopes and over every proud alpine crest, the mist loses its beauty and splendour of colouring, and becomes like a leaden-coloured fog, until finally, so great has been the accumulation, it becomes black and terrible as a tempest cloud, and thus rests during the entire day, and frequently until far into the night. ”

“ In vain explorers sweated under the burning sun, and endured the fatigues and privations of arduous travel: in vain did they endeavour to give form to their discoveries, for in a few years the ruthless map-maker obliterated all away. Cast your eyes over these series of small maps, and witness for yourselves what this tribe has done to destroy every discovery, and to render labour and knowledge vain. There is a chartographer living, the chiefest sinner alive. In 1875, I found a bay at the north-east end of Lake Victoria. ”

“ As I have already said, the forest is typical of the life of humanity. No single glance can be taken of it without becoming conscious that decay, and death, and life, are at work there as with us. I never could cast a leisurely look at it but I found myself, unconsciously, wondering at some feature which reminded me of some scene in the civilised world. ”

“ But what thoughts were kindled as we peeped out from an opening in the woods and looked across the darkening river which reflected the advancing tempest, and caught a view of the mighty army of trees—their heights as various as their kind, all rigid in the gloaming, awaiting in stern array the war with the storm. The coming wind has concentrated its terrors for destruction, the forked lightning is seen darting its spears of white flame across the front of infinite hosts of clouds. Out of their depths issues the thunderbolt, and the march of the winds is heard coming to the onset. ”

“ The sad occasion was an opportunity to impress on the infatuated men for the hundredth time the absurd folly they were guilty of in sacrificing their lives for a goat, in nobly working for months to earn pay and honour by manliness and fidelity, and then bury all in the entrails of cannibals. I had bestowed on them cattle, sheep, goats, fowls, handfuls of silver, and a thousand pounds’ worth of clothes, but none, no, not one, had offered his throat to me to be cut. But for the sake of a goat, at any time day or night the cannibal might kill and then eat them. ”

“ I discover that there is a plot to break away completely from the Pasha’s authority. The number of those actually faithful to-day in camp is nine. I am told that they know the Pasha is so unsuspecting that they have but to kiss his hand, and plead forgiveness, and he becomes pliant to any schemer.
When a man becomes the jest of such rogues authority is weak indeed. ”

“ I am inclined to believe by my own troubles on the Congo that his must have been great—perhaps greater; that not one of the least of his troubles must have been the difficulty of finding good, fit, serviceable, and willing men. In Emin Pasha he meets with a man who, though a German and a doctor of medicine, is industrious, civil, ready, and obliging. Had I met Emin on the Congo, those qualities would have endeared him to me, as they must have been appreciated by Gordon. Those qualities are much rarer than editors of newspapers imagine. ”

“ Above these will probably rise a few trees with masses of thick, shining leaves, and a profusion of blood-red flowers, whose petals have been showered on the impervious mass of leguminous vines of creepers and shrubs below, and strongly contrast to their own light purple, yellow, or white flowerets. The amoma show snowy flower-goblets, edged with pink; a wild vine will have its light purple; a creeper, with pinnate leaves, though flowerless at the time, will have its foliage tinted auburn; a pepper bush with its red pods, or a wild mango, attracts attention by myriads of bead-like flowerets ”

“ In our souls we applaud the rush and levelling force of the wind, and for a second are ready to hail the victor; but the magnificent array of the forest champions, with streaming locks, the firmness with which the vast army of trees rise in unison with their leaders, the rapturous quiver of the bush below inspire a belief that they will win if they but persevere. ”

“ Every man I saw, giant or dwarf, only deepened the belief that Africa had other claims on man, and every feature of the glorious land only impressed me the more that there was a crying need for immediate relief and assistance from civilisation; that first of all, roads of iron must be built, and that fire and water were essential agencies for transport, more especially on this long-troubled continent than on any other. ”

“ There were clumps of palms, there were giant tree-ferns, there were wild bananas, and tall, stately trees all coated with thick green moss from top to root, impenetrable thickets of broad-leafed plants, and beads of moisture everywhere, besides tiny rillets oozing out every few yards from under the matted tangle of vivid green and bedewed undergrowth. It was the best specimen of a tropical conservatory I had ever seen. It could not be excelled if art had lent its aid to improve nature. In every tree-fork and along the great horizontal branches grew the loveliest ferns and lichens ”