At length we turned a corner and came face to face with the Falls. They are wonderful to behold, not so much because of their height—though that is impressive—but because of the immense volume of water which is precipitated through such a narrow outlet. Indeed, seeing the great size of the river below the Falls, it seemed impossible to believe that it was wholly supplied from this single spout. In clouds of rainbow spray and amid thunderous concussions of sound we set to work to climb the southern side of the rock wall, and after an hour achieved the summit. It was possible to walk to within an inch of the edge and, lying on one's face with a cautious head craned over, to look actually down upon the foaming hell beneath. The narrowness of the gorge at the top had not been overstated. I doubt whether it is fifteen feet across from sheer rock to sheer rock. Ten pounds, in fact, would throw an iron bridge across the Nile at this point. But it is evident that the falling waters must have arched and caved away the rock below their surface in an extraordinary degree, for otherwise there could not possibly be room for the whole river to descend.
We waited long at this strange place, watching the terrible waters, admiring their magnificent fury, trying to compute their force. Who can doubt that the bridle is preparing which shall hold and direct their strength, or that the day will come when forlorn Fajao—now depopulated and almost derelict—will throb with the machinery of manufacture and electric production? I cannot believe that modern science will be content to leave these mighty forces untamed, unused, or that regions of inexhaustible and unequalled fertility, capable of supplying all sorts of things that civilized industry needs in greater quantity every year, will not be brought—in spite of their insects and their climate—into cultivated subjection. Certain it is that the economy of the world remains hopelessly incomplete while these neglects prevail, and, while it would be wasteful and foolish to hustle, it would be more wasteful and more foolish to abate the steady progress of development.
From these reflections I was roused abruptly by the Nile, a wave of whose turbulent waters—cast up by some unusual commotion as they approached the verge—boiled suddenly over a ledge of rock hitherto high and dry, carrying an ugly and perhaps indignant swish of water to my very feet.
CHAPTER IX
HIPPO CAMP
It took no little time to stow all our baggage, food and tents upon the launch and its steel boats, and though our camp was astir at half-past three, the dawn was just breaking when we were able to embark. And then the James Martin wedged herself upon a rock a few yards from the shore of the sheltering inlet, and seemed to have got herself hard and fast; for pull as we might with all the force of the launch at full steam, and the added weight of the current to help us, not an inch would she budge. Everything had, therefore, to be unloaded again from the straggler, and when she had thus been lightened and her freight transferred to the attendant canoes, James Kago ordered his tribesmen to leap into the water, which was not more than five feet deep, and push and lift the little vessel whilst the steamer tugged. But this task the natives were most reluctant to perform out of fear of the crocodiles, who might at any moment make a pounce, notwithstanding all the noise and clatter. Thereupon the energetic chief seized hold of them one after another round the waist, and threw them full-splash into the stream, till at least twenty were accumulated round the boat, and then, what with their impatience to finish their uncomfortable job and our straining tow rope, the James Martin floated free, was reloaded, and we were off.
The Landing-place at Fajao.
As we drifted out into mid-stream the most beautiful view of the falls broke upon us. It was already almost daylight, but the sun had not yet actually topped the great escarpment over which the Nile descends. The banks on both sides of the river, clad with dense and lofty forest and rising about twice as high as Cliveden Woods from the water's edge, were dark in shadow. The river was a broad sheet of steel grey veined with paler streaks of foam. The rock portals of the falls were jetty black, and between them, illumined by a single shaft of sunlight, gleamed the tremendous cataract—a thing of wonder and glory, well worth travelling all the way to see.
We were soon among the hippopotami. Every two or three hundred yards, and at every bend of the river, we came upon a herd of from five to twenty. To us in a steam launch they threatened no resistance or danger. But their inveterate hostility to canoes leads to repeated loss of life among the native fishermen, whose frail craft are crumpled like eggshells in the snap of enormous jaws. Indeed, all the way from here to Nimule they are declared to be the scourge and terror of the Nile. Fancy mistaking a hippopotamus—almost the largest surviving mammal in the world—for a water lily. Yet nothing is more easy. The whole river is dotted with floating lilies detached from any root and drifting along contentedly with the current. It is the habit of the hippo to loll in the water showing only his eyes and the tips of his ears, and perhaps now and again a glimpse of his nose, and thus concealed his silhouette is, at three hundred yards, almost indistinguishable from the floating vegetation. I thought they also looked like giant cats peeping. So soon, however, as they saw us coming round a corner and heard the throbbing of the propeller, they would raise their whole heads out of the water to have a look, and then immediately dive to the bottom in disgust. Our practice was then to shut off steam and drift silently down upon them. In this way one arrives in the middle of the herd, and when curiosity or want of air compels them to come up again there is a chance of a shot. One great fellow came up to breathe within five yards of the boat, and the look of astonishment, of alarm, of indignation, in his large, expressive eyes—as with one vast snort he plunged below—was comical to see. These creatures are not easy to kill. They bob up in the most unexpected quarters, and are down again in a second. One does not like to run the risk of merely wounding them, and the target presented is small and vanishing. I shot one who sunk with a harsh sort of scream and thud of striking bullet. We waited about a long time for him to float up to the surface, but in vain, for he must have been carried into or under a bed of reeds and could not be retrieved.