A journey to the interior of Africa would be a rural jaunt, were it
not so often endangered by the perils of war. The African may fairly
be characterized as a shepherd, whose pastoral life is varied by a
little agriculture, and the conflicts into which he is seduced, either
by family quarrels, or the natural passions of his blood. His country,
though uncivilized, is not so absolutely wild as is generally
supposed. The gradual extension of Mahometanism throughout the
interior is slowly but evidently modifying the Negro. An African
Mussulman is _still_ a warrior, for the dissemination of faith as well
as for the gratification of avarice; yet the Prophet's laws are so
much more genial than the precepts of paganism, that, within the last
half century, the humanizing influence of the Koran is acknowledged by
all who are acquainted with the interior tribes.
But in all the changes that may come over the spirit of _man_ in
Africa, her magnificent external _nature_ will for ever remain the
game. A little labor teems with vast returns. The climate exacts
nothing but shade from the sun and shelter from the storm. Its
oppressive heat forbids a toilsome industry, and almost enforces
indolence as a law. With every want supplied, without the allurements
of social rivalry, without the temptations of national ambition or
personal pride, what has the African to do in his forest of palm and
cocoa,--his grove of orange, pomegranate and fig,--on his mat of
comfortable repose, where the fruit stoops to his lips without a
struggle for the prize,--save to brood over, or gratify, the electric
passions with which his soul seems charged to bursting!
It is an interesting task to travel through a continent filled with
such people, whose minds are just beginning, here and there, to emerge
from the vilest heathenism, and to glimmer with a faith that bears
wrapped in its unfolded leaves, the seeds of a modified civilization.
* * * * *
As I travelled in the "dry season," I did not encounter many of the
discomforts that beset the African wayfarer in periods of rain and
tempest. I was not obliged to flounder through lagoons, or swim
against the current of perilous rivers. We met their traces almost
every day; and, in many places, the soil was worn into parched ravines
or the tracks of dried-up torrents. Whatever affliction I experienced
arose from the wasting depression of heat. We did not suffer from lack
of water or food, for the caravan of the ALI-MAMI commanded implicit
obedience throughout our journey.
In the six hundred miles I traversed, whilst absent from the coast, my
memory, after twenty-six years, leads me, from beginning to end,
through an almost continuous forest-path. We struck a trail when we
started, and we left it when we came home. It was rare, indeed, to
encounter a cross road, except when it led to neighboring villages,
water, or cultivated fields. So dense was the forest foliage, that we
often walked for hours in shade without a glimpse of the sun. The
emerald light that penetrated the wood, bathed every thing it touched
with mellow refreshment. But we were repaid for this partial bliss by
intense suffering when we came forth from the sanctuary into the bare
valleys, the arid _barrancas_, and marshy _savannas_ of an open
region. There, the red eye of the African sun glared with merciless
fervor. Every thing reflected its rays. They struck us like lances
from above, from below, from the sides, from the rocks, from the
fields, from the stunted herbage, from the bushes. All was glare! Our
eyes seemed to simmer in their sockets. Whenever the path followed
the channel of a brook, whose dried torrents left bare the scorched
and broken rocks, our feet fled from the ravine as from heated iron.
Frequently we entered extensive _prairies_, covered with blades of
sword-grass, tall as our heads, whose jagged edges tore us like saws,
though we protected our faces with masks of wattled willows. And yet,
after all these discomforts, how often are my dreams haunted by
charming pictures of natural scenery that have fastened themselves for
ever in my memory!
As the traveller along the coast turns the prow of his canoe through
the surf, and crosses the angry bar that guards the mouth of an
African river, he suddenly finds himself moving calmly onward between
sedgy shores, buried in mangroves. Presently, the scene expands in the
unruffled mirror of a deep, majestic stream. Its lofty banks are
covered by innumerable varieties of the tallest forest trees, from
whoso summits a trailing network of vines and flowers floats down and
sweeps the passing current. A stranger who beholds this scenery for
the first time is struck by the immense size, the prolific abundance,
and gorgeous verdure of every thing. Leaves, large enough for
garments, lie piled and motionless in the lazy air: The bamboo and
cane shake their slender spears and pennant leaves as the stream
ripples among their roots. Beneath the massive trunks of forest trees,
the country opens; and, in vistas through the wood, the traveller sees
innumerable fields lying fallow in grass, or waving with harvests of
rice and _cassava_, broken by golden clusters of Indian corn. Anon,
groups of oranges, lemons, coffee-trees, plantains and bananas, are
crossed by the tall stems of cocoas, and arched by the broad and
drooping coronals of royal palm. Beyond this, capping the summit of a
hill, may be seen the conical huts of natives, bordered by fresh
pastures dotted with flocks of sheep and goats, or covered by numbers
of the sleekest cattle. As you leave the coast, and shoot round the
river-curves of this fragrant wilderness teeming with flowers, vocal
with birds, and gay with their radiant plumage, you plunge into the
interior, where the rising country slowly expands into hills and
mountains.
The forest is varied. Sometimes it is a matted pile of tree vine, and
bramble, obscuring every thing, and impervious save with knife and
hatchet. At others, it is a Gothic temple. The sward spreads openly
for miles on every side, while, from its even surface, the trunks of
straight and massive trees rise to a prodigious height, clear from
every obstruction, till their gigantic limbs, like the capitals of
columns, mingle their foliage in a roof of perpetual verdure.
At length the hills are reached, and the lowland heat is tempered by
mountain freshness. The scene that may be beheld from almost any
elevation, is always beautiful, and sometimes grand. Forest, of
course, prevails; yet, with a glass, and often by the unaided eye,
gentle hills, swelling from the wooded landscape, may be seen covered
with native huts, whose neighborhood is checkered with patches of
sward and cultivation, and inclosed by massive belts of primeval
wildness. Such is commonly the westward view; but north and east, as
far as vision extends, noble outlines of hill and mountain may be
traced against the sky, lapping each other with their mighty folds,
until they fade away in the azure horizon.
When a view like this is beheld at morning, in the neighborhood of
rivers, a dense mist will be observed lying beneath the spectator in a
solid stratum, refracting the light now breaking from the east. Here
and there, in this lake of vapor, the tops of hills peer up like green
islands in a golden sea. But, ere you have time to let fancy run riot,
the "cloud compelling" orb lifts its disc over the mountains, and the
fogs of the valley, like ghosts at cock-crow, flit from the dells they
have haunted since nightfall. Presently, the sun is out in his
terrible splendor. Africa unveils to her master, and the blue sky and
green forest blaze and quiver with his beams.