Page:The empire and the century.djvu/855

 east and west above the billowy sea of minor hills till they merged in the perspective of a hundred miles, where the Rusisi River plunges in its rocky gorge and starts on its long journey viâ Tanganyika and the Congo to the sea.

West loomed the giant pile of Kirunga's forest-draped slopes, banking up the great crater, which smoked sullenly, and from time to time hurled a fire-bomb into the aching sky.

And to the north, beyond the long course of the Rutchuru River, the Albert Edward Lake, first resting-place of Father Nile, was already fading in the reaccumulating mists of day.

Here, where I sat, was the parting of the ways.

The moisture dripping from the vegetation either fed the Atlantic through the Congo or the Mediterranean through the Nile at the dictate of the morning breeze, for even as the destinies of nations are moulded by the play of the infinitesimally small, so is the form of Africa carved by the breezelets from Karissimbi's snows.

The moss bank upon which I rested is the true source of the Albert Nile, and I watched in wonder the little drops babble away on their marvellous 8,000-mile journey to the blue waters of the Mediterranean.

Shade of Ulysses, what an 'odyssey'!

Waving my hand to them in farewell as they trickle over the rock's face and are gone, I see phase by phase the wonderful panorama that those drops will see.

I see a rocky gorge, fern-draped and cellar-cool, wherein a snowstorm of butterflies heave and sink upon the glistening sands, followed in their giddy maze by the brown eyes of a gorilla, which coughs its sweet content, while a mighty bull-elephant—Njojo Mkubwa of the Batwa—rubs his creaking hide against the rocks and idly fans his ears.

Mile upon mile of reeking forest, where the pungent sweat of hypertortured life drifts in a maze of liana-strangled trees, where death gives fresh impetus to life, where orchids blaze, where great moths flash fierce