“Up, boys, up! to the plantains! up! Please God we shall have plantains to-day!” This was uttered to cheer the sad hearts. Within a few minutes we had filed away from our earthy couches, and were on the track in the cheerless light of the morning, some hobbling from sores, some limping from ulcers, some staggering from weakness. We had commenced to feel warmed up with the motion of the march, when, hark! I heard a murmur of voices ahead. Little Saburi held the rifle ready, observant of the least sign of the hand, when I saw a great pile of green fruit rising above the broad leaves of the phrynia that obstructed a clear view, and intuitively one divined that this must be the column of foragers advancing to meet us, and in a second of time, the weak, the lame, and the cripple, the limping and moaning people forgot their griefs and their woes, and shouted the grateful chant which goes up of its own accord towards the skies out of the full and sensitive hearts, “Thanks be to God.” Englishman and African, Christian and Pagan, all alike confess Him. He is not here, or there, but everywhere, and the heart of the grateful man confesseth Him.

It needed only one view of the foremost men to have told what the heedless, thoughtless herd had been doing. It was no time for reproaches, however, but to light fires, sit down and roast the green fruit, and get strength for the return, and in an hour we were swinging away back again to Starvation Camp, where we arrived at 2.30 P.M., to be welcomed as only dying men can welcome those who lend the right hand to help them. And all that afternoon young and old, Zanzibari and Manyuema, Soudanese and Madi, forgot their sorrows of the past in the pleasures of the present, and each vowed to be more provident in the future—until the next time.

1888.
Dec. 17.
Ihuru River.

On the 17th we reached the Ihuru, and the next day forded the river, and from thence we cut our way through the forest, through bush and plants which were the undergrowth, and early in the afternoon of the 19th we emerged out of the trackless bush, and presently were on the outskirts of the plantations of Fort Bodo, at which all the people admired greatly.

On the 20th we cut a track through the deserted plantations, and after an hour’s hard work reached our well-known road, which had been so often patrolled by us. We soon discovered traces of recent travel, and late foraging in piles of plantain skins near the track; but we could not discover by whom these were made. Probably the natives had retired to their settlements; perhaps the dwarfs were now banqueting on the fat of the land. We approached the end of our broad western military road, and at the turning met some Zanzibari patrols who were as much astonished as we were ourselves at the sudden encounter. Volley after volley soon rang through the silence of the clearing. The fort soon responded, and a stream of frantic men, wild with joy, advanced by leaps and bounds to meet us; and among the first was my dear friend the Doctor, who announced, with eyes dancing with pleasure, “All is well at Fort Bodo.”

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE GREAT CENTRAL AFRICAN FOREST.

Professor Drummond’s statements respecting Africa—Dimensions of the great forest—Vegetation—Insect life—Description of the trees, &c.—Tribes and their food—The primæval forest—The bush proper—The clearings: wonders of vegetable life—The queer feeling of loneliness—A forest tempest—Tropical vegetation along the banks of the Aruwimi—Wasps’ nests—The forest typical of human life—A few secrets of the woods—Game in the forest—Reasons why we did not hunt the animals—Birds—The Simian tribe—Reptiles and insects—The small bees and the beetles—The “jigger”—Night disturbances by falling trees, &c.—The Chimpanzee—The rainiest zone of the earth—The Ituri or Upper Aruwimi—The different tribes and their languages—Their features and customs—Their complexion—Conversation with some captives at Engweddé—The Wambutti dwarfs: their dwellings and mode of living—The Batwa dwarfs—Life in the forest villages—Two Egyptians captured by the dwarfs at Fort Bodo—The poisons used for the arrows—Our treatment for wounds by the arrows—The wild fruits of the forest—Domestic animals—Ailments of the Madis and Zanzibaris—The Congo Railway and the forest products.

1888.
Dec.
Forest.

An English Professor, qualified to write F.R.S.E., F.G.S., after his name, who is a talented writer, and gifted with first-class descriptive powers, while confessing that he was but a “minor traveller, possessing but few assets,” ventured upon the following bold statements respecting Africa:—

“Cover the coast belt with rank yellow grass, dot here and there a palm, scatter through it a few demoralised villages, and stock it with the leopard, the hyena, the crocodile, and the hippopotamus; clothe the mountainous plateaux next, both of them with endless forest, not grand umbrageous forest, like the forests of South America, nor matted jungle like the forests of India, but with thin, rather weak forest, with forest of low trees, whose half-grown trunks and scanty leaves offer no shade from the tropical sun,”—but you will find nothing in all these trees to remind you that you are in the tropics. “Day after day you may wander through these forests with nothing except the climate to remind you where you are * * * * *.” “The fairy labyrinth of ferns and palms, the festoons of climbing plants blocking the paths and scenting the forests with their resplendent flowers, the gorgeous clouds of insects, the gaily plumaged birds, the parraquets, the monkey swinging from his trapeze in the shaded bowers—these are unknown to Africa.”