Afrit

“ At times we are in a complete circle of lake and sky, without a sign of land. At others we skirt lofty coasts covered with forest and crowned with distant blue-brown mountains, or thread our course between a multitude of beautiful islands. The air is cool and fresh, the scenery splendid. We might be yachting off the coast of Cornwall in July. We are upon the Equator, in the heart of Africa, and crossing the Victoria Nyanza, four thousand feet above the sea! ”

“ That mysterious region, known as the centre of Africa, has swallowed up many travelers, and you seem to me to be launching on an expedition which, in the domain of sentiment, corresponds to those where so many explorers have perished, whether in the sands or at the hands of natives. ”

“ There’s a lot of splendid stuff to paint. We are walled in by the sharp upright mountain and the bay. Across the bay the piled-up mountains of Africa look lovely and dangerous. It makes one think of savagery and earthquakes—the elemental lawlessness. ”

“ The Southern Cross shines on a Southern world.
Now soon, with ecstasy, they hear the cry,
Land! land in sight! the land we can descry.
And now the longed-for shores before them rise,
With mountain peaks which fringe the azure skies;
Tall beetling crags frown o’er the breaker’s roar,
Whose white-tipped billows kiss a sandy shore;
’Tis Afric! land of mystery and fear,
Of burning climate, and of desert drear,
Where the fierce lion and fiercer savage roam ”

“ A glance at the map will show innumerable rivers finding their way into the sea along the whole east and north coasts of the colony, and it is the country which forms the watersheds of these rivers which is spoken of as the coast. West and south of this bordering tract lies the great central plateau, which is mainly a huge plain, where the surface, which sometimes rises into rolling downs and sometimes spreads out in apparently limitless flats, is only broken by a few ranges of low hills. ”

“ With a coast extending more than six hundred miles from north to south, indented with numerous bays and harbours, connected with her golden interior almost to the base of the lofty Sierra by navigable streams, blessed with a mild and salubrious climate, and capable of sustaining a large population, she must one day become the entrepôt of the commerce of the East. ”

“ When God shall bring you upon the coast of Guinea, you are to make yourself acquainted, as you proceed along the coast, with all its rivers, havens and harbours or roadsteads, making a plat or chart of the same, in which you are to insert every place that you think material, all in their true elevations. ”

“ He sees the white walls of the city of Acre rising from the margin of the water at the extremity of it, far in the distance—and never ceases to admire the smooth and beautiful beach which lies spread out before him, its broad expanse broken, perhaps, here and there on the side toward the sea, with the wrecks of ships which lie there half buried, and enlivened on the land with trains of mules or of camels passing toward Acre or Haïfa, or by some picturesque group of tents pitched upon the plain—the encampment of some wandering tribe of Arabs, or of a party of European travelers. ”

“ The great bend in the coast of Africa, which makes room for the Gulf of Guinea, is one of the singular land formations that strikes the eye and excites the fancy.
The glowing pictures of the beautiful Gold Coast and the wonders of land and sea under the equator serve to create a taste for travel and a desire to enjoy the strange and wonderful sights to be met.
An English explorer, Alvan Millson, has recently written much to give an added interest to this coast section and to call attention to one of the many freaks of nature. ”

“ If in any place the coast widened, little creeks ran in among the hills, and made the sea accessible from all points. The island consisted entirely of this one mountain-range; the higher peaks sometimes tipped with snow, with a strip of coast at their feet, sometimes narrowing to a little shingly beach, sometimes expanding to a fertile plain, where beautiful cities with fairy bell-towers and marble palaces gleamed like ivory carvings amidst the palms and thick green leaves. ”

“ If the atmosphere were no older than the date of the settlement of the colony, it could not feel more youthful, it is so light and bright, and exhilarating! The one drawback, and the only one, is the north-west wind ”

“ But those Mountaines are a great helpe unto those pleasant Valleys with the waters that fall from them; for in all those parts inhabited by Spaniards towards the South Sea, it is most certain and most observable that it never raineth, in so much that the houses are uncovered on the tops, and onely matts laid over them to keep off the dust, and yet is this Countrey what with the waters that fall from the Mountaines, what with the morning and evening dewes, as fruitfull and plentifull as any Countrey in the World. ”

“ But the calmest region is the upland, where human life is spread out beneath the bodily eye, where the mind roves from the peasant’s nest to the spiry town, from the schoolhouse to the churchyard, from the diminished team in the patch of fallow, or the fisherman’s boat in the cove, to the viaduct that spans the valley, or the fleet that glides ghostlike on the horizon. ”

“ The western half of North Africa is formed by a series of terraces, sloping down from the great desert table land of North Central Africa to the basin of the Mediterranean; including in this last phrase that portion of the Atlantic which forms a sort of gulf between Spain and the NW. coast of Africa. These terraces are intersected and supported by mountain ranges, having a general direction from west to east, and dividing the region into portions strikingly different in their physical characters. ”

“ Beside which, we shall feel much more at home if we can talk as people do in inhabited countries: instead of saying, for instance, 'the little island at the mouth of our bay, where we found the dead shark,' 'the large stream near our tent, across which we made the bridge,' 'that wood where we found cocoanuts, and caught the monkey,' and so on. Let us begin by naming the bay in which we landed. What shall we call it?"
"Oyster Bay," said Fritz.
"No, no!—Lobster Bay," cried Jack, "in memory of the old fellow who took a fancy to my leg!" ”

“ As the Powers finally arranged it, the map of the West Coast is like a mosaic, like the edge of a badly constructed patchwork quilt. In trading along the West Coast a man can find use for five European languages, and he can use a new one at each port of call. ”

“ CHAPTER XVII. — THE SHADOW OF THE AFRICAN FOREST.
Let us return to the castaways.
It was morning on the coast of Africa—Africa the mysterious, the inhospitable Africa, leonum arida nutrix.
There was a little harbor into which flowed a shallow, sluggish river, while on each side rose high hills. In front of the harbor was an island which concealed and protected it.
Here the palm-trees grew. The sides rose steeply, the summit was lofty, and the towering palms afforded a deep, dense shade. ”

“ That this region has been their true home since the first migrations from the south there can be no doubt. Here land and people stand in the closest relation one to the other; here every conspicuous physical feature recalls some popular memory; every rugged crest is associated with the name of some national hero, every lake or stream is still worshipped or held in awe as a local deity, or else the abode of the ancestral shades. ”

“ The Island lay in a land-locked Bay of the great Continent, encompassed on all sides by its Highlands. The little hills, which its inhabitants called mountains, were girt around by the magnificent mountain-ranges of the Main Land. Its colonial settlements, which the dwellers in them called cities, were commanded from the other side by the glorious cities of [Pg 126] the kingdom. Its islanders, who called themselves "the world," were compassed about by the victorious ones now at home in the great true world across the waters. ”

“ This island, though in the same parallel of latitude as the barren and scorching coast of Africa, is temperate, and comparatively healthy. The soil is stony, but tolerably fertile. Experience has shewn that it will produce most of the necessaries, and even some of the luxuries of life. ”

“ We have made the bay for which I shaped the course of the Maud as soon as the gale began to make things sloppy. This is a mountainous island, with nothing like a harbor on the west coast between Cape Gata and Cape Arnauti. There are from twelve to twenty fathoms of water in this bay, within a mile of the shore; and the rocks close aboard of us reach out a mile and a half, with from ten to twelve feet of water on them. There is no town within ten miles of the shore, and we are not likely to see any natives, unless some of them come to this bay to fish. ”

“ As if nature aimed to provide for two distinct communities, a precipitous mountain spur, which sprawls several hundred miles north and south, ribs the territory almost mathematically in the centre, and tumbles onward, broken and disjointed, to the shores of the Caribbean Sea. ”

“ He, indeed, who enters the Landes, appears to have crossed a French frontier, and left the merry land behind. No more bright vineyards—no more rich fields of waving corn—no more clustered villages—no more chateau-turrets—no [Pg 66] more tapering spires. You look up to heaven to see whether the sky has not changed, as well as the land. No; all there is blue and serene as before, and the keen, hot sun glares intensely down upon undulating wastes of marsh, fir, and sand, among which you may travel for leagues without seeing a man, hearing a dog bark, or a bird sing. ”

“ Do you ask me to describe the Bay of Tunis? Pray have you ever [50] read a description of the Bay of Naples, or the Bosphorus, or the Gulf of Smyrna? No words can do justice to the exquisite scene that presented itself as I stepped upon deck this morning. The great bay is almost land-locked. To the east is a fine range of billowy hills, called the Lead Mountains, famous both for their mineral treasures and their hot springs. In the dim distance the blue peaks of the Zaghouan range were to be descried, the range of mountains that look down upon the far-famed city of Kairwan. ”

“ The low land that lies between the foot of the ridges and the sea, and some of the valleys, are the only parts of the island that are inhabited, and here it is populous: the houses do not form villages or towns, but are ranged along the whole border at the distance of about fifty yards from each other, with little plantations of plantains, the tree which furnishes them with cloth. ”

“ The low ranges of sun-scorched, blackened ridge and furrow formation which form the approaches to the higher altitudes of the Afghán upland, and which are almost as regularly laid out by the hand of nature in some parts of the frontier as are the parallels ... ”

“ This province contains within itself the germs of enduring prosperity: a splendid bay many miles in extent, where countless ships can ride close to the shore, with lakes and rivers branching from it, form so many natural harbours, docks, and canals; whilst it abounds with sugar plantations, forests of timber fit for shipbuilding and other purposes, precious stones, and many tropical productions, the latter of which can be all procured in a degree only limited by the amount of labour and the facility of bringing things down to the ports for shipment. ”

“ With energetic, if at times uncertain, steps the adventurous colonists have advanced from the settlements on the eastern and southern coasts of the vast island into the interior. Expeditions, led by intrepid explorers, have forced their way against all but insurmountable difficulties into the hitherto unknown regions which lie to the north and west of the eastern colonies. ”

“ There the land, being a succession of terraces rising from the ocean, offers the most beautiful spots, already cleared away by the hand of nature, for the erection of residences, having for their backgrounds magnificent forests, while the sea view unfolds the boundless expanse of the Southern Ocean, through storm and calm, bearing on its bosom the argosies richly laden with the commerce of the East and the West. ”

“ In Central Africa, in the districts that lie low and there is morass, the natives are quite aware of the fact, and systematically form a bed of burnt clay as a platform on which to erect their hovels. Now look here, my dear friend, I'd most uncommonly like to take a boat along with you, and explore both sides of the Blackwater to begin with, and its inlets, and to tick down on the ordnance map every red hill we can find. ”

“ This was our condition when the pale-faces landed upon the eastern shores of this great island. Every nation has its destiny. We now behold our once extensive domains reduced to a few acres; our territory, which once required the fleetest moons to traverse, is now spanned by the human voice. ”

“ Indeed, in relation to travel interest generally, it is remarkable what great variety or diversity of scene is found in going from one part to the other of the Maritime Provinces. It may truly be said that each province has its own distinct features of beauty, and those who go to one district for the mountains will have their counterpart in others who will seek the sea and the open shore. ”

“ You will then turn to the westward, and pursue this part of the survey, so as to determine the breadth of the foul ground off the coast of New Guinea, and the continuity or interrupted form of that coast; and you will establish certain positions on the mainland (if the adjacent sea be navigable, and if not on the several advancing islands) which may serve as useful land-falls for vessels coming from the Indian Seas, or for points of departure for those who have passed through any of these straits. ”