After a few steps the magnificent forest surrounds us on all sides. But, here also, it seems in vain to attempt to unravel the confusion of stems and branches, twigs and shoots, tendrils and leaves. The forest hems in such a path on both sides like a wall. The ground is everywhere covered with thickly-matted bushes, which one cannot even see through; but, struggling through these, all sorts of grasses have sprung up, forming a second undergrowth; just above that, tall-stemmed bushes and low trees spread their branches on all sides; over these again rise taller trees, and above them all tower the giants of the forest. By far the greater number of bushes in the undergrowth are thickly covered with thorns, while the mimosas towering above them are armed with long, hard, sharp spines, and even the grasses have burr-like seed-capsules covered with fine prickles, or ears set with sharp hooks, so that every attempt to penetrate the forest from the path is foiled by a thousand obstacles. The bird the huntsman’s gun has brought down is lost to him because in falling it is caught in a bush which he cannot reach without an amount of exertion quite out of proportion to the object; the game which conceals itself in a shrub before our very eyes is saved because we can no longer perceive it; a crocodile about three yards long, which we startled in the wood, escapes us by withdrawing itself into an isolated bush so completely that we cannot see a scale of it, and accordingly cannot fire a shot to any purpose.
Still we continue striving vainly to master the wealth of impressions, to separate one picture from another, to see any one tree from the ground to its top, to distinguish the leaves of one from those of another. From the stream it had been possible to distinguish some of the fresh green tamarinds from the mimosas of various species surrounding them, to recognize the magnificent kigelias, reminding us slightly of our own elms, to delight in the palm-crowns towering over the rest of the trees: here, in the depths of the forest, all the individual parts are fused into an inseparable whole. All the senses are claimed at once. From the leafy dome which the eye attempts to penetrate is wafted the balsamic fragrance of some mimosas now in bloom; and hence also there rings continually in the ear a medley of the most varied sounds and notes, from the guttural cries of the monkeys or the screeching of parrots, to the modulated songs of birds and the buzzing of the insects flying about the blossoming trees. The sense of touch is no less fully, if not quite agreeably stimulated by the innumerable thorns, while that of taste may regale itself with the few attainable, but more or less unpalatable fruits.
But at last we do come upon a distinct and definite picture. A tree, mighty in its whole structure, gigantic even in its minor branches, rises above the innumerable plants surrounding its base; like a giant it presses upwards and takes possession of space for its trunk and crown. It is the elephant, the pachyderm among the trees, the Adansonia, the tabaldie of the natives, the baobab. We stand in amazement to gaze on it; for the eye must become accustomed to the sight before it can take in the details. Picture a tree, the circumference of whose trunk, at a man’s height from the ground, may measure a hundred and twenty feet, whose lower branches are thicker than the trunks of our largest trees; whose twigs are like strong branches, and whose youngest shoots are thicker than one’s thumb; remember that this mighty giant of the plant-world rises to a height of about one hundred and thirty feet, and that its lowest branches spread out to almost sixty, and you will be able to form some idea of the impression it makes on the beholder. Of all the trees of the primeval forests in this region, the baobab is the first to lose its leaves, and it remains longest in its winter repose; during this season all its branches and twigs stretch out leafless into the air, while from most of them there hang, by long flexible stalks, fruits about the size of a melon, containing a mealy, slightly sour pulp between the seeds—the whole a sight which stamps itself ineffaceably on the memory. But, after the first rains of spring, great, five-lobed leaves unfold, enhancing the charm of this wondrous tree, and when, between the leaves, the long-stalked buds disclose white flowers as large as roses, this incomparable giant is transformed, as if by magic, into an enormous rose-bush of indescribable beauty, the sight of which stirs the heart of even the most matter-of-fact of men with admiration.
No other tree in the forest can be compared with the baobab; even the duleb-palm, which raises its head above all the surrounding trees, cannot bear comparison with it in charm and impressiveness. Yet the duleb-palm is one of the most splendid trees found in the interior of Africa, and one of the finest palms in the world; its trunk is a pillar which no artist could have surpassed; its crown a capital worthy of such a pillar. The upright trunk thickens just above the ground, and thins in a remarkable manner to about half its height, then begins to bulge out, then again diminishes, and swells out once more just under the crown. This consists of broad, fan-like leaves, hardly less than a square yard in extent, whose stalks stand out straight on all sides round a middle point, thus giving the tree a most impressive individuality. The fruits attain to about the size of a child’s head, and the clusters hanging among the leaves greatly enhance the beauty of the crown, which is, indeed, an ornament to the whole forest.
Fig. 31.—The Baobab Tree—Central Africa.
The legendary always clings about the gigantic; it lives on it, and takes form and meaning from it. This thought occurs to one when one sees, as frequently happens, the baobab overgrown with the tendrils of one of the climbing plants which beautify these forests in rich abundance. Climbing plants have always seemed to me a fitting emblem of the Arabian fairy tales. For as they appear to require no soil, although they have sprung from it, but to take their chief nourishment from the air; as they wind their flexible stems from tree to tree, attaching themselves firmly to each, yet struggling on, until, at length, they unfold on some flowerless tree-top, covering it with radiant, fragrant blossoms: so the fairy tale, though it may have been firmly rooted in fact, is not sustained by any real connection therewith, but reaches up to heaven for strength, and sends its poetry over all the world until it finds a heart which beats responsive. When I speak of climbing plants I do not mean any one species, but include under the term all those plants which here thickly cover a trunk with their tortuous coils, and there spread their tendrils over a bare tree-top; which in one place link many trees together, and in another cover a single tree with wreaths of green; which in one part of the forest link branch to branch with bridges of naked tendrils, and in another region combine to render the way impassable; occurring in a hundred different forms, but always twining and climbing. Their beauty, the charm they exercise on the northerner may be felt but cannot be described, for words to begin or end a satisfactory description would be as difficult to find as the beginnings and ends of the climbers themselves. These climbing plants, though within reach of one’s hand, yet do not allow of close observation; one follows the course of their tendrils admiringly, but without being able to say whence they come and whither they go; one revels in the sight of their flowers without being able to reach them, or often do more than guess to what plants they belong. These climbers, above all else, impress on the woodlands the stamp and seal of the primitive forest.
But they have other ornaments than the blossoms which they themselves unfold. Their tendrils are the favourite perches of many of the most beautiful birds of the forest, living flowers which far surpass those of the plant in beauty and charm. Sometimes it happens that a sudden flash, like a sun-ray reflected from a smooth, bright surface, catches the eye and guides it to the spot from which it emanated. The shimmer is indeed a sunbeam—a sunbeam reflected from the glossy plumage of a metallic starling, now in one direction, now in another, with every movement. Delighted by the wonderful beauty of this bird, one would gladly observe it carefully, and learn something of its life and habits; but one’s attention is continually being claimed by new phenomena. For here, too, picture crowds upon picture. Where the metallic starling sat a few moments before, there appears a no less brilliant golden cuckoo, a sun-bird or honey-sucker rivalling the humming-birds in beauty of plumage, a pair of charming bee-eaters, a roller displaying his brilliant feathers, a halcyon no less beautiful, a paradise fly-catcher, whose long, drooping, median tail-feathers give the little creature such a surprising splendour, a turaco unfolding his deep purple-red feathers at every stroke of his wings, a shrike whose flaming red breast excels even these wings in brightness, a quaintly-shaped hornbill, a golden weaver-bird, a vidua or “widow-bird”, a wood-hoopoe with its metallic brilliance, a dainty woodpecker, a leaf-green dove, a flight of similarly coloured parrots, and many other feathered inhabitants of the forest. This is a specially favoured home of birds, affording food and shelter to many hundreds and thousands of different species, so that one sees them much sooner and much more frequently than any of the other creatures which have their home in the forest. Birds animate every part, from the ground to the tops of the tallest trees, from the most impenetrable bushes to the leafless branches of the baobab. Among the grasses and other plants growing luxuriantly on the ground the well-trodden paths of francolin and perhaps also guinea-fowl twine and intertwine in every direction; the leafy spaces just above the root-stocks of the bushes are occupied by little doves, the spreading portion of their tops by various beautiful birds, especially sun-birds and finches, while families of colies shoot down, like arrows from a bow, to where the bush-tops are so thickly matted and thoroughly interwoven that they seem quite impenetrable, and, by creeping and clinging, pushing through every possible gap and opening, succeed in forcing their way into the centre, there to seek for food; wood-hoopoes, titmice, and woodpeckers hang or climb about, examining every crevice in the bark of the trunks which rise just above the bushes; delightful bee-eaters or rollers, paradise fly-catchers and drongos sit on the lower twigs of the second layer of tree-tops awaiting their flying prey; on the stronger branches of the third layer turacos hop about, small herons walk with dignity backwards and forwards, horned and other owls cling closely to the stems and sleep; parrots and barbets flit about among the thick foliage of the tallest trees, while eagles, falcons, and vultures have settled on their topmost boughs. Wherever one casts one’s eye there is a bird.
As might be expected from this universal distribution, or indeed omnipresence, we hear continually the most varied bird-voices. They coax and call, pipe and whistle, chirp and twitter, trill and warble, coo and chatter, scream and crow, screech and cackle, cry and sing on all sides of us, above and beneath, early and late, and all day long. A hundred different voices sound together, now blending into a wonderful harmony, now into a bewildering maze of sounds which one seeks in vain to analyse, in which only long practice enables one to differentiate individual voices. With the exception of thrushes, bulbuls, several species of warblers, and drongos, there are no true songsters, but there are many pleasing babblers and delightful chatterers, and an endless number who scream, cackle, croak, and utter various more or less shrill sounds. Taken collectively, therefore, the bird-notes of the primitive forest cannot for a moment compare in tunefulness and sweetness with the spring songs of our own woods, but the individual voices are most remarkable. Wild doves coo, moan, laugh, and call from the tree-tops and the thickest bushes, francolins and guinea-fowl cackle loudly from their midst, parrots screech, ravens croak, plantain-eaters succeed in most accurately mimicking the strange guttural cries of a troop of long-tailed monkeys, while the turacos utter sounds like those made by a ventriloquist; barbets whistle loudly in slurred notes, their voices together making a ringing song, so intricate, yet so full of expression that it must be reckoned one of the most distinctive sounds of the forest; the shimmering metallic starlings sing, and though they can only compass a few rough sounds, now croaking, now screeching, now squeaking, these are arranged, combined, blended, and allowed to die away in endless repetition; the magnificent screaming sea-eagle, resident beside all the water-courses and water-basins of the forest, justifies his name. High on a tree-top sits the “abu tok” (producer of the sound “tok”) of the natives, a small hornbill, calling his “tok” loudly and accompanying each sound with a nod of his head, weighted with its disproportionately large bill. Only this one sound does his unpliant voice produce, yet with it he expresses his love to the mate he is wooing, or has won, as intelligibly as the nightingale tells its tale in its bewitching song. The emotion swelling in his breast struggles for expression. The cries follow each other in more and more rapid succession, the appropriate movements become more and more rapid, until the heavy head is too tired to accompany any longer, and one phrase of this singular love-song comes to an end, to be begun and sung through again in precisely the same manner a few minutes later. From the unapproachable thicket sounds the voice of the hagedash or wood-ibis, and a slight shudder seizes the listener. The song of this bird is a lamentation of the most pitiful kind; it sounds as if a little child were being painfully tortured, perhaps slowly roasted over a small fire, and were crying out in its anguish; for long-drawn plaintive sounds alternate with shrill cries, sudden shrieks with faint moanings. From the high-lying parts of the forest, where there are small bare patches, resound the far-reaching metallic trumpet-tones with which the crested crane accompanies his graceful, lively dances in honour of his mate, and these awaken an echo in the forest, as well as in the throat of every bird possessed, like himself, of a ringing voice, so that his cry is the signal for a simultaneous outburst of song from a large number of other birds. Thus incited, every bird with any voice at all gives utterance to it, and for a time a flood of varied sounds drowns the individual voices. But it is not only the different species of feathered inhabitants of the forest who thus take different parts in the piece; sometimes even the two sexes of one species each sing a different part. The babbling thrushes, plantain-eaters, francolins, and guinea-fowl scream together like the barbets already described, and thus evoke those strange complex phrases, which ring out distinctly from the general confusion of voices. But in a few species, particularly in the bush-shrikes, the male and female each sing a distinct part. In one species which I observed—the scarlet shrike—the male sings a short strophe, reminding one of the intricate whistle of our golden oriole. In another—the flute-shrike—the male utters three bell-like flute-notes, striking third, key-note, and octave. Immediately following comes the answer of the female, in both cases a disagreeable croaking not easily described, but as unfailingly correct in time as if the birds had been instructed by a musician. Sometimes it happens that the female begins, and croaks four or five times before the answer comes; then the male strikes in again, and they alternate with their usual regularity. I have convinced myself experimentally as to this co-operation of the sexes, by shooting now the male and now the female, and in every case only the notes of the surviving sex could be heard. It must be allowed that these notes, enchanting as they are at first, lack the richness and variety, as the collective voices lack the tunefulness and harmony, of the bird songs in our woods at home; nevertheless it is a grand and impressive melody which one hears in the primitive forest in spring-time when hundreds and thousands of voices mingle together, millions of insects swarm with loud bumming and buzzing round the blossom-laden trees, countless lizards and snakes rustle through the dry foliage, and every now and then the shrill yet sonorous call of the eagle sounds down from above, the trumpet notes of the crested crane or the guinea-fowl are heard for the time above all other voices, immediately afterwards a warbler sings his charming song quite close to the listener’s ear, and again, one of the screamers gives the key-note, which awakes an echo from a thousand throats.
If the naturalist succeeds in becoming more at home in the forest than he had at first ventured to hope, he gets many delightful glimpses of the domestic life of animals, and more particularly of birds. It is still spring-time, and love reigns in all hearts. The birds sing and caress, build their nests, and brood. Even from the boat one can observe the brooding colonies of some species.