In Wildest Africa, Vol. 2

Scenes of marvellous beauty open out before the wanderer who follows the windings of some great river through the unknown regions of Equatorial East Africa.
The dark, turbid stream is to find its way, after a thousand twists and turns, into the Indian Ocean. Filterings from the distant glaciers of Kilimanjaro come down into the arid velt, there to form pools and rivulets that traverse in part the basin of the Djipe Lake and at last are merged in the Rufu River. As is so often the case with African rivers, the banks of the Rufu are densely wooded throughout its long course, the monotony of which is broken by a number of rapids and one big waterfall. Save in those rare spots where the formation of the soil is favourable to their growth, the woods do not extend into the velt. Trees and shrubs alike become parched a few steps away from the sustaining river. The abundance of fish in the river is tremendous in its wilder reaches—inexhaustible, it would seem, despite the thousands of animal enemies. The river continually overflows its banks, and the resulting swamps give such endless opportunities for spawning that at times every channel is alive with fry and inconceivable multitudes of small fishes.
It is only here and there and for short stretches that the river is lost in impenetrable thickets. Marvellous are those serried ranks of trees! marvellous, too, the sylvan galleries through which more usually it shapes its way! They take the eye captive and seem to withhold some unsuspected secret, some strange riddle, behind their solid mass of succulent foliage. It is strange that these primeval trees should still survive in all their strength with all the parasitic plants and creepers that cling to them, strangling them in their embrace. You would almost say that they lived on but as a prop to support the plants and creepers in their fight for life. Convolvuli, white and violet, stoop forward over the water, and the golden yellow acacia blossoms brighten the picture.