infinite in extent and never to
be got through; and scores of rivers that boiled round the sharp rocks,
threatening to submerge or dash in pieces the frail bark canoe--black
and frightful to look on as rivers in hell; and nameless mountain after
mountain to be toiled round or toiled over. I may have seen Roraima
during that mentally clouded period. I vaguely remember a far-extending
gigantic wall of stone that seemed to bar all further progress--a rocky
precipice rising to a stupendous height, seen by moonlight, with a huge
sinuous rope of white mist suspended from its summit; as if the guardian
camoodi of the mountain had been a league-long spectral serpent which
was now dropping its coils from the mighty stone table to frighten away
the rash intruder.

That spectral moonlight camoodi was one of many serpent fancies that
troubled me. There was another, surpassing them all, which attended
me many days. When the sun grew hot overhead and the way was over open
savannah country, I would see something moving on the ground at my side
and always keeping abreast of me. A small snake, one or two feet long.
No, not a small snake, but a sinuous mark in the pattern on a huge
serpent's head, five or six yards long, always moving deliberately at
my side. If a cloud came over the sun, or a fresh breeze sprang up,
gradually the outline of that awful head would fade and the well-defined
pattern would resolve itself into the motlings on the earth. But if the
sun grew more and more hot and dazzling as the day progressed, then the
tremendous ophidian head would become increasingly real to my sight,
with glistening scales and symmetrical markings; and I would walk
carefully not to stumble against or touch it; and when I cast my eyes
behind me I could see no end to its great coils extending across the
savannah. Even looking back from the summit of a high hill I could
see it stretching leagues and leagues away through forests and rivers,
across wide plains, valleys and mountains, to lose itself at last in the
infinite blue distance.

How or when this monster left me--washed away by cold rains perhaps--I
do not know. Probably it only transformed itself into some new shape,
its long coils perhaps changing into those endless processions and
multitudes of pale-faced people I seem to remember having encountered.
In my devious wanderings I must have reached the shores of the
undiscovered great White Lake, and passed through the long shining
str