“Can you swim?” said Dr. Good to me; “I forgot to ask you that.”
“Yes,” said I, thinking of the glowing description he had given me of the road, “there were several things you forgot to ask me, and some things you forgot to tell. But even if I could not swim in clear water, I could probably swim in that pond.”
We plunged in and were able to wade through it.
Shortly after this a drenching rain fell, a tropical downpour, that wet us to the skin. In this rain we stood and ate our first lunch, some fresh biscuits which one of the ladies at Batanga had baked that morning, saying as she tied them up for us in heavy oil paper, that it would be the last food of that sort that we would taste for a long time. But when the rain came on, the native carrier who had them in charge appropriated the oil paper to carry his shirt in, leaving the biscuits exposed to the rain. As we stood eating them while it still rained, it was with mitigated sorrow we reflected that it would be the last of that sort we would taste for a long time. I will admit that this was a dreary outset, but it was not unfortunate. My tenderfoot rigidity had completely relaxed for the remainder of the day. I cared not what happened afterwards, and walked without timidity, fearing neither mud nor water, nor height, nor depth, nor any such thing.
No amount of experience and practice in walking long distances on our public roads at home will insure success in walking a bush-path. In the latter there are constant obstructions and frequent annoyances, the obstructions requiring a peculiar physical aptitude, the annoyances a peculiar mental aptitude. The native possesses both aptitudes to a marvellous degree. The average native, carrying on his back a load of forty pounds, can keep up with the average white man carrying nothing. Yet, I have no doubt that on a turnpike, neither of them carrying anything, the average white man would equal the native and perhaps outwalk him. It must also be remembered that the white man is in a hostile climate in Africa, and is never normally strong.
We started in the morning as soon as it was light enough to see the path, that is, about six o’clock, and walked eight or nine hours a day, stopping an hour at noon. We walked at a very rapid pace, almost on a run where the path would permit. About four o’clock we stopped for the day, usually at a camping-ground made by the natives in carrying produce from the interior. These camps were open glades surrounded by the forest wall and ceiled by the blue sky.
Two or three nights we camped beside a flowing stream, a hidden brook, that “all night to the sleeping woods sang a quiet tune.”
After sitting ten minutes I followed along a short distance till I found an inviting spot where the pellucid stream widened and spread over a sand bottom, and there, all mud-bespattered, perspiring, weary and sore, I lay down in the cool, running stream, with my clothes on. Does the reader know what luxury is? Certainly not, unless after eight or nine hours of walking and wading over such a road he has lain down in a cool stream with his clothes on. I turn my face to one side and then the other, and let the flowing water caress my cheek, and as it washes away the mire from my clothing, it also soothes the weary limbs and sore joints and smoothes out the wrinkles of care; and my heart answers back in a song to the murmur of its music. This is the ancient Lethean stream in which the weary and the aged bathed and became oblivious of pain and sorrow. After a bath I get into woollen pajamas and slippers, and sit down a little later to the best repast of modern times—an absolutely unlimited quantity of boiled rice and corned beef. “Is this really corned beef?” said I; “it tastes like angel.” Does the reader know what luxury is? Not unless after such a journey he has sat down to such a meal. For luxury is not something objective in the thing that we enjoy, but in the keenness of our relish; and that depends upon contrast—in this instance the contrast of rest and food with hard and hungry endurance. A few days after reaching New York, I attended a banquet at which was served I know not how many courses, the richest and the best. Objectively, it was everything that ingenuity could devise; only keen-edged appetite was wanting. And I was saying within me to my fellow guests: “Ah! I have a secret that you know not. This is only a taste of luxury; but if you would enjoy it to the full measure of your capacity, you must follow me eight hours through the fell roads of the jungle, bathe in running water, get into woollen pajamas, and then sit down in an arboreal salle à manger to a banquet of unlimited rice and corned beef.”
We usually slept under booths made from the boughs of trees which we found in most of the camps. The most primitive bed and that which we sometimes used, was made by cutting slender, round poles six feet long and laying them side by side on two cross-sticks at the head and foot. The native carrier sleeps on this bed of poles with nothing under him and nothing over him; but when possible he keeps a fire beside him. We white men were wrapped in a blanket or two. But the use of such a bed is not wise when it can be avoided, and it is seldom necessary. More than once some one unable to sleep had to rise in the dark, find one or two bags in which loads were packed, spill the contents on the ground (making such a noise that one suddenly waking might suppose that an elephant had charged the camp) and spread the bags upon the bed in the hope of subduing the effect of its knots and depressions and its general hardness. I soon discarded that sort of bed and preferred to bivouac in a hammock of stout and stiff canvas, suspended between two trees, with a rope stretched taut above it upon which I threw a large and light rubber blanket which formed a gable over me. This was, at least for me, the most comfortable and luxurious bush-bed that I ever slept in.
But in the early morning of the second day both comfort and luxury seemed remote and unrealizable ideas. There is a miserable chill in the forest at five o’clock in the morning that always makes one reluctant to leave his warm blankets; and on that morning it was raining. After coming out of the stream the night before, I had wrung out of my clothes what water I could, and they remained without further drying until I put them on in the morning to the accompaniment of chattering teeth, for they seemed as cold as ice. The boys’ fires had all gone out and we ate some boiled rice left over from the night before—ate it standing; for sitting down one’s clothes will get next to him, but standing up one can shrink away from them, or, at least, he can try. After some experience I was almost able to stand up in a suit of clothes without letting them touch me. Everything was wet and cold and the branches and shrubs shook water on us. There is a right way and a wrong way to conquer the ill-will of such a morning. The wrong way is to confess your misery, to shiver and shrink and try to save yourself. The right way is to plunge into it suddenly, get wet as quickly as possible, step lively, and make believe that you like it. The power of this mental attitude is astonishing, and with a little determination you will soon be master of the situation.