Page:The empire and the century.djvu/857

 North, south, east, and west the sea of grass rolls to the round horizon, broken only where a herd of elephants, ears a-flap, heads a-nodding, are swinging away to the cool reed-beds of the Albert Edward Lake.

The smell of sulphur fills the air, fumaroles spit, and tall geysers play, iridescent in the sun. Far and near the humph-humph of dozing hippos breaks the quiet which hangs over Lake Albert Edward's broad expanse.

Weird cacti cast their gaunt shadows over miles of snowy salt, and the wretched Wanyabinga fisher-folk cringe in terror as they watch the vultures hover over scenes of nameless cannibal orgies in the far-off Balegga Hills.

Strange canoes of fibre-sewn planks drift idly on the still surface of the lake, or bustle to and fro in the deep shadows of the Katwe cliffs, which stand sheer and brisk against the stupendous mass of cloud that for ever screens the huge mysteries of the Mountains of the Moon.

Then, roaring in gorge and tumbling in cascade, the Nile is again the Nile, threading the neck, and hurrying to the flat bottoms of the Semliki valley.

Anon the forest creeps upon the river's silent reaches—great, dim, mysterious aisles of trees where giant bananas battle for a peep of sky; mop-headed palms leap clear above the mass of green, and raphias with long, graceful fronds sweep and caress the passing tide. Here do great crocodiles lurk, and the shy okapi picks his nervous way along the beds of forest streams; ape-men haunt the glades—curious survivals of an infinite past—low-browed, hairy of limb, pathetic-faced as any dog; pigmies seek honey, or fret the testy elephant with tiny poisoned arrows; black-and-white colobus monkeys dash jabbering along the rubber vines; great apes cough and grunt; the air is heavy with mind-wasting scents; and, above all, beneath all, all-permeating, thrills the tireless anthem of the insect world, the suck-suck of decaying swamp, and the warm, sensuous feel of straining, redundant life.