Page:Travels in West Africa, Congo Français, Corisco and Cameroons (IA travelsinwestafr00kingrich).pdf/416

 but little inducement to travelling about in it. Along the banks of the main waterways passing through it, the villages are all situated in similar sites, namely perched on the top of a clay bank, or dwarf cliff, behind which the land slopes steeply into what, in the wet season, is a swamp. On all sides rises the colossal, white-trunked, liane-hung forest; on all sides one may say, making no exception even for the broad river the villages face; for across it there is the tree-cliff again and in its deep dark waters are mirrored back the forest and the sky—all that the world is made of to the inhabitants of these villages; they are born, live, and die with no interval save sleep from the sight of that universe of forest, river and sky—and only a little sky—that which they can see over the river. All the change they get the seasons bring; the gloomy dry season when the wind steals softly up the river in the morning time, and down the river in the evening; the tornado seasons with their burst of earth-shaking thunder, and their lightnings coming down into the forest in great forked splashes, and their howling, squealing, moaning winds, that rush devastating through it, claiming as many victims among its giants as even the lightnings do.

The course of a grand tornado through a high forest is a thing to see, but anything but pleasant to experience. The heavy brooding suffocating heat when the great storm seems pressing its hot breast down on the very ground—the sensation of depression and wretchedness that creeps over you—and the evident apprehension of all living things of what they know is coming; an apprehension which changes into terror when the storm bursts and comes sweeping seawards with all the frenzy of its demoniac power and the roar of its rain. Behind it lie the bodies of many of the noblest trees, either lightning-seared, still standing, but turned in a moment from luxuriant living things into gaunt skeletons; or thrown down, with all their bravery of foliage and bush-rope, by the winged force which has wrung them round, and pulled them sheer out by the roots—things 100 to 200 feet high, just as you would pull out a root of groundsel—flinging them crashing among their fellows, wrecks to rot.