Black Ivory, R. M. Ballantyne [reading like a writer txt] 📗

Everything depends upon taste, as the monkey remarked when it took to nibbling the end of its own tail! If you like a thing, you take one view of it; if you don’t like it, you take another view. Either view, if detailed, would be totally irreconcilable with the other.

The lower part of the river Shire, into which our travellers had now entered, is a vast swamp. There are at least two opinions in regard to that region. To do justice to those with whom we don’t sympathise, we give our opponent’s view first. Our opponent, observe, is an honest and competent man; he speaks truly; he only looks at it in another light from Harold Seadrift and Disco Lillihammer.

He says of the river Shire, “It drains a low and exceedingly fertile valley of from fifteen to twenty miles in breadth. Ranges of wooded hills bound this valley on both sides. After the first twenty miles you come to Mount Morambala, which rises with steep sides to 4000 feet in height. It is wooded to the top, and very beautiful. A small village peeps out about half-way up the mountain. It has a pure, bracing atmosphere, and is perched above mosquito range. The people on the summit have a very different climate and vegetation from those on the plains, and they live amidst luxuriant vegetation. There are many species of ferns, some so large as to deserve the name of trees. There are also lemon and orange trees growing wild, and birds and animals of all kinds.” Thus far we agree with our opponent but listen to him as he goes on:—

“The view from Morambala is extensive, but cheerless past description. Swamp, swamp-reeking, festering, rotting, malaria-pregnant swamp, where poisonous vapours for several months in the year are ever bulging up and out into the air,—lies before you as far as the eye can reach, and farther. If you enter the river at the worst seasons of the year, the chances are you will take the worst type of fever. If, on the other hand, you enter it during the best season, when the swamps are fairly dried up, you have everything in your favour.”

Now, our opponent gives a true statement of facts undoubtedly, but his view of them is not cheering.

Contrast them with the view of Disco Lillihammer. That sagacious seaman had entered the Shire neither in the “best” nor the “worst” of the season. He had chanced upon it somewhere between the two.

“Git up your steam an’ go ’longside,” he said to Jumbo one afternoon, as the two canoes were proceeding quietly among magnificent giant-reeds, sedges, and bulrushes, which towered high above them—in some places overhung them.

“I say, Mister Harold, ain’t it splendid?”

“Magnificent!” replied Harold with a look of quiet enthusiasm.

“I does enjoy a swamp,” continued the seaman, allowing a thin cloud to trickle from his lips.

“So do I, Disco.”

“There’s such a many outs and ins an’ roundabouts in it. And such powerful reflections o’ them reeds in the quiet water. W’y, sir, I do declare w’en I looks through ’em in a dreamy sort of way for a long time I get to fancy they’re palm-trees, an’ that we’re sailin’ through a forest without no end to it; an’ when I looks over the side an’ sees every reed standin’ on its other self, so to speak, an’ follers the under one down till my eyes git lost in the blue sky an’ clouds below us, I do sometimes feel as if we’d got into the middle of fairy-land,—was fairly afloat on the air, an’ off on a voyage through the univarse! But it’s them reflections as I like most. Every leaf, an’ stalk, an’ flag is just as good an’ real in the water as out of it. An’ just look at that there frog, sir, that one on the big leaf which has swelled hisself up as if he wanted to bust, with his head looking up hopefully to the—ah! he’s down with a plop like lead, but he wos sittin’ on his own image which wos as clear as his own self. Then there’s so much variety, sir—that’s where it is. You never know wot you’re comin’ to in them swamps. It may be a openin’ like a pretty lake, with islands of reeds everywhere; or it may be a narrow bit like a canal, or a river; or a bit so close that you go scrapin’ the gun’les on both sides. An’ the life, too, is most amazin’. Never saw nothin’ like it nowhere. All kinds, big an’ little, plain an’ pritty, queer an’ ’orrible, swarms here to sitch an extent that I’ve got it into my head that this Shire valley must be the great original nursery of animated nature.”

“It looks like it, Disco.”

The last idea appeared to furnish food for reflection, as the two friends here relapsed into silence.

Although Disco’s description was quaint, it could scarcely be styled exaggerated, for the swamp was absolutely alive with animal life. The principal occupant of these marshes is the elephant, and hundreds of these monster animals may be seen in one herd, feeding like cattle in a meadow. Owing to the almost impenetrable nature of the reedy jungle, however, it is impossible to follow them, and anxious though Disco was to kill one, he failed to obtain a single shot. Buffaloes and other large game were also numerous in this region, and in the water crocodiles and hippopotami sported about everywhere, while aquatic birds of every shape and size rendered the air vocal with their cries. Sometimes these feathered denizens of the swamp arose, when startled, in a dense cloud so vast that the mighty rush of their wings was almost thunderous in character.

The crocodiles were not only numerous but dangerous because of their audacity. They used to watch at the places where native women were in the habit of going down to the river for water, and not unfrequently succeeded in seizing a victim. This, however, only happened at those periods when the Shire was in flood, when fish were driven from their wonted haunts, and the crocodiles were reduced to a state of starvation and consequent ferocity.

One evening, while our travellers were proceeding slowly up stream, they observed the corpse of a negro boy floating past the canoe; just then a monstrous crocodile rushed at it with the speed of a greyhound, caught it and shook it as a terrier does a rat. Others dashed at the prey, each with his powerful tail causing the water to churn and froth as he tore off a piece. In a few seconds all was gone. (Livingstone’s Zambesi and its Tributaries, page 452.) That same evening Zombo had a narrow escape. After dusk he ran down to the river to drink. He chanced to go to a spot where a crocodile was watching. It lay settled down in the mud with its head on a level with the water, so that in the feeble light it could not be seen. While Zombo was busy laving the water into his mouth it suddenly rushed at him and caught him by the hand. The limb of a bush was fortunately within reach, and he laid hold of it. There was a brief struggle. The crocodile tugged hard, but the man tugged harder; at the same time he uttered a yell which brought Jumbo to his side with an oar, a blow from which drove the hideous reptile away. Poor Zombo was too glad to have escaped with his life to care much about the torn hand, which rendered him hors de combat for some time after that.

Although Disco failed to get a shot at an elephant, his hopeful spirit was gratified by the catching of a baby elephant alive. It happened thus:—

One morning, not very long after Zombo’s tussle with the crocodile, Disco’s canoe, which chanced to be in advance, suddenly ran almost into the midst of a herd of elephants which were busy feeding on palm-nuts, of which they are very fond. Instantly the whole troop scattered and fled. Disco, taken completely by surprise, omitted his wonted “Hallo!” as he made an awkward plunge at his rifle, but before he could bring it to bear, the animals were over the bank of the river and lost in the dense jungle. But a fine little elephant, at that period of life which, in human beings, might be styled the toddling age, was observed to stumble while attempting to follow its mother up the bank. It fell and rolled backwards.

“Give way for your lives!” roared Disco.

The boat shot its bow on the bank, and the seaman flew rather than leaped upon the baby elephant!

The instant it was laid hold of it began to scream with incessant and piercing energy after the fashion of a pig.

“Queek! come in canoe! Modder come back for ’im,” cried Jumbo in some anxiety.

Disco at once appreciated the danger of