t
heterogeneous jumble of parasitic creepers of all descriptions spoken of
in Africa by the generic denomination of "bush," thickly interspersed
with trees, many of which were of large size. Path there was none, not
even the faintest traces of a footprint in the dry sandy soil to show
that humanity had ever passed over the ground before us. It may be that
ours _were_ the first human footsteps which had ever pressed the soil in
that particular spot; at all events it looked very much like it, and we
had not travelled one hundred feet before we became fully impressed with
the necessity for carefully marking our route if we had the slightest
desire to find our way back again. This task was intrusted to me, and I
accomplished it by cutting a twig half through, and then bending it
downwards until a long light strip of the inner wood was exposed. This
I did at distances of about a yard apart all along our route, whilst the
skipper and Smellie went ahead and forced a passage for the party
through the thick undergrowth.

The general direction of our route was about south-south-west, as nearly
as the skipper could hit it off with the aid of a pocket-compass, and it
took us more than two hours to accomplish a journey of as many miles
through the thick tangled undergrowth. This brought us out close to the
water's edge again, and we saw before us a canal about a cable's length
across, which the skipper said he was certain was a continuation of the
one we had entered in the gig. About a mile distant, on the opposite
side of the canal, could be seen the tops of the hills which we had
noticed on the occasion of our first exploration of the river.

Here, as at the point of our landing, the banks of the canal consisted
of black slimy foetid mud, out of which grew a belt of mangroves, their
curious twisted roots straggling in a thick complicated mass of net-work
over the slime beneath.

The sun was shining brilliantly down through the richly variegated
foliage on the opposite bank of the stream, and lighting up the surface
of the thick turbid water as it rolled sluggishly past; but where we
stood--just on the inner edge of the mangrove-swamp--everything was
enshrouded in a sombre green twilight, and an absolute silence prevailed
all round us, which was positively oppressive in its intensity.

Breathless, perspiring, and exhausted with our unwonted exertions, we
flung ourselves upon the ground for a moment's rest, during which the