During my travels I have had so many strange adventures, I have endured so many days of hunger and starvation, I have had so many hair-breadth escapes, I have seen so many strange sights, I have met face to face so many savage and fierce men and still more savage and dangerous beasts, that I could spend days in recounting to you the adventures of my life.
Africa is a wonderful country. There are great sandy deserts, extensive ranges of mountains, immense prairies, vast tracts of brushwood, swampy lands, great rivers and lakes; but the wonder of that large continent is the great equatorial forest I discovered, and which contains so many wild animals and interesting tribes of people.
What an immense forest it is—a sea of trees, if I may use the expression! No one knows how wide it is, neither do we know its exact length.
What gigantic trees are seen in that forest! Some rival in size the great California trees. These are the giants of the forest, and they rise two or three hundred feet above the other trees, upon which they look down. They are like sentinels watching over the country. Some of these big trees are worshipped by the natives. Under the roof of the mighty branches is the thick jungle, where no man can penetrate easily. The jungle is the undergrowth of the forest. It is made up of younger trees: lianas, thorny creepers, kinds of bamboo and rattan, thorny trees, sword-grass that cuts like a razor, and aloes plant in the swampy parts. In many places the explorer cannot see a yard off from where he stands.
What beautiful butterflies and queer insects, rare birds—some with brilliant plumage—lovely and strange flowers and orchids the traveller will meet as he explores this unknown land! Though all alone in that great solitude, he will seldom feel lonely, for his mind will be occupied all the time.
HIDDEN SNAKES THE CHIEF DANGER OF THE FOREST.
There are also many disagreeable things in the forest. The most dangerous, for they are often enemies unseen, are the snakes. There are snakes that live chiefly in the water. I used to keep a sharp lookout for them when I bathed in the clear little streams which run through the woods. There are tree snakes, those who pass a great part of their time on trees and feed on squirrels, birds, and monkeys; and also land snakes—that is, snakes that never climb trees and seldom go into the water. The biggest of them is the python. Often they are coiled along the trunk of a tree waiting to spring upon a passing gazelle. But there are so many venomous snakes, it makes me shudder as I think of them with their triangular heads. What fangs they have, especially the Clotho nasicornis, a thick short snake! Its fangs for all the world look like fish bones. In color that snake can hardly be distinguished from the ground and dead leaves on which it crawls. It is of great thickness round the middle; its head is very huge and hideous, being triangular in shape, and having an erect proboscis or born rising from the tip of its nose. Besides snakes, there are centipedes, so-called because, I suppose, they have about a hundred legs. Their sting is poisonous, and in some cases fatal; those that are very dark in color are much dreaded.
Then the scorpions! you find them everywhere, even between the leaves of your books!
What narrow escapes I have had with snakes, scorpions, centipedes! I wonder sometimes that I am alive to tell of the things I have seen. I never used to lie down without looking for these creeping things. You think, naturally, that a man's life must be miserable on that account. Not at all; one gets accustomed to everything in the world. At last I did not mind it at all, I got so used to doing this every day.