Before leaving his Seriba, Mohammed had sent a message to Nganye to warn him of the advance of the caravan, so that he might have sufficient time for the preparation of the bridge by which it could cross the Tondy. This work was executed without delay. A suspension bridge of a very curious and original construction had been thrown across the rushing waters. Some of the strongest trees on each bank had been chosen for supports, and the bridge consisted simply of strong ropes attached to them with some planks or poles laid upon as cross-bars. This aërial pathway, as might be expected, oscillated like a swing; but dangerous as it was, it permitted a passage by carefully crawling from one cross-piece to the next.
The march from Nganye’s residence to the river led through the marvellous grass-thickets which I have already described. The grass was now shooting up afresh in all its wild luxuriance. The season for the great elephant-hunts was at an end, and Mohammed was well satisfied with the quantity of ivory his friend had secured. He told me that Nganye, although he ruled over a district that was smaller in extent (though it contained nearly as many hunting-grounds as that of Munza), had furnished him with a much larger supply of ivory than the powerful Monbuttoo king.
It was near the river, in some huts newly-built in Peneeo’s district, that we passed our last night in the Niam-niam country. A wide tract of wilderness had been lately rooted up in order to acquire fresh arable land against the time when the soil already in cultivation should be exhausted. In these places it is wonderful to see how the masses of shrubs that have been oppressed by the exuberant growth of the trees, sprout out with renewed vigour: free, as it were, from a long restraint, and reanimated by an open sky, these step-children of the sylvan flora seem to overwhelm the wanderer with their beauteous bounty.
On the 24th of June we reached the Tondy and its hanging bridge. To convey the baggage across this tottering erection was the work of nearly an entire day. The place of our present transit was four miles to the east of the spot at which we had crossed on our outward journey; it had been chosen higher up the river for several reasons, not only because the stream was narrower and the banks were higher, but principally because the trees were of a larger, more substantial growth, better adapted for the purpose of being converted into piers for the suspended ropes which formed the bridge. The river was here sixty feet wide, but near the banks it was so full of fallen trees and bushes, of which the boughs projected as though growing in the water, that the width of the stream was practically diminished one-half. The velocity of the current was about 115 feet a minute, the depth nowhere being less than 10 feet.
SUSPENSION-BRIDGE OVER THE TONDY.
HIGH IN MID-AIR.
The materials of the suspension-bridge consisted exclusively of branches of the wild vine intertwined with thick elastic ropes of unusual strength. The French traveller d’Abbadie noticed a similar stratagem for crossing rivers on his tour to Enarea, and bridges improvised very much in the same manner are constructed from creeping plants in South America. In order to get the ropes raised to a sufficient height, a regular scaffolding of fallen stems has to be erected on either side of the river, by means of which the festoons of cords are raised to a proper altitude. The clambering from cross-piece to cross-piece upon this unstable structure, poised in mid-air, seemed to require little less than the agility of an orang-outang; while the very consciousness of the insecurity of the support was enough to make the passenger lose his composure, even though he were free from giddiness and already an adept in the gymnastic art.