Serious difficulties and obstacles without number were destined to
present themselves on the very first day, as if to warn the
travellers that two courses alone were open to them—either to retrace
their steps whilst there was yet time, or to nerve themselves to the
accomplishment of their perilous undertaking.
The Gazelle River, or Bahr-el-Gazal, up which they were sailing,
bears no resemblance to the Nile. The latter, above Khartoum, is a
majestic stream, increasing in volume as its sources are approached.
Its banks are occasionally encumbered with floating plants, but a
powerful current runs through their midst, and leaves a superb
passage way, often quite free and clear, to the vessels which
navigate it. The Gazelle River, on the contrary, resembles a huge
marsh, whose waters appear to lie stagnant and overgrown by
vegetation. A passage has to be made, at the cost of extreme and
tedious exertion, through a narrow channel, amidst a mass of
nenuphars, dense papyrus rushes, and small plants, called "selt,"
which choke every opening, close up every crevice, and, so to speak,
bind one obstacle to another.
Mdlle. Tinne, in 1863, Schweinfurth, in 1869, and Baker, in 1870, had
already been stopped by this vegetable barrier, and the expedition of
1873 met with similar difficulties. At length the flotilla was
utterly unable to move ahead, in spite of a favourable wind and the
power of the huge sails.
Then the escort, the fifty bearers, and the adult negroes, who had
been rescued by the Egyptian steamer, had to leave the boats, plunge
waist-high in the marsh, lay hold of long ropes, and drag each vessel
along by sheer force, one after the other. MM. de Morin, Périères,
and Delange were anxious to lend a band, but, like Louis XIV., whose
grandeur kept him on shore, they were confined to their vessel by the
fear of losing caste in the eyes of the negroes, who, looking down
upon manual labour, hold in slight esteem any white man who is
imprudent enough to put himself on a par with them and share their
work.
The trio were, nevertheless, obliged to join them, not to help, but
to rescue them. These marshes, or floating islets, and all this
luxuriant vegetation, serve as haunts, or cover, for herds of
hippopotami and countless crocodiles. As a rule, the shouting and
singing of the blacks, and the encouraging voices of those on board
the boats, drive away all these creatures, which could be seen
hurrying off towards the dense thickets, where their instinct told
them they would be safe. But it occasionally happened that one of
them, sound asleep on his bed of roses, would suddenly emerge from
the middle of a brake, and show signs of attacking the strangers who
were venturesome enough to intrude on his domain. Then one of the
three Parisians, or, sometimes, all three together, roused by the
shouts of the terrified blacks, would leave their vessel, and advance
against the common enemy. The struggle was never very prolonged, for
the crocodiles, though their ferocity is very great, invariably take
to flight when attacked in earnest.
Though these incidents of the voyage, the sudden disembarkation and
hurried chase, made the time pass quickly enough for most of the
travellers, the trusty Joseph did not appear to appreciate them. His
master, in order to give him something to do and prevent his growing
so fat as to present later on a toothsome morsel for some cannibal,
had decided that he should take part in all the excursions, to carry
the spare rifles and ammunition.
Having thus taken the field, Joseph found himself compelled to wade
through the marshes, struggle against the too importunate rushes, and
advance against the crocodiles, and with a very bad grace he
submitted, much to the amusement of Miss Beatrice Poles. The
unfortunate man, nevertheless, really deserved commiseration. His
white skin and soft flesh excited the curiosity and the appetite, not
only of the crocodiles (which would not have been very dangerous,
seeing that M. de Morin was at hand to defend his servant), but of
the leeches, green flies, and tiger mosquitoes which abound in the
districts watered by the Bahr-el-Grazal. The leeches were the
principal offenders, audaciously making their war inside his leggings
and inflicting many a bleeding wound. The poor fellow began to find
out that he was paying rather a high price in advance for his lovely
slave girls and elephants' tusks.
Whilst Joseph groaned and removed from his calves some obstinate
leech which, never having tasted so succulent a dish, persisted in
its endeavours to continue its repast, Madame de Guéran, Miss Poles,
and their three companions, their work over for the day, reclined on
board their boat, dragged onward by three hundred arms, and gazed at
the surrounding scenery.
It is impossible to give any adequate idea of these strange regions,
and it is difficult to realize that you are sailing in a river or on
board ship. You are induced to think that you are on _terra firma_,
in a vast plain watered by rivulets, and interspersed with pools and
insignificant lakes. The sun finds a mirror in all these waters and
lends additional splendour to massive stems, to flowers of every hue,
to plants of every kind, revelling in a perpetual bath, to nenuphars
red, white and blue, and to magnificent thickets of the papyrus,
which raise their crowns twenty feet above the surrounding flood.
Round these stems, large as sugar canes, were fastened at nightfall
the ropes which secured the flotilla. The darkness prevented any
further attempt to carve out a passage along the narrow channel, and
it would have been simply inhuman to leave the crowd of haulers in
the midst of a dense vegetation when at each step they ran the risk
of being lost to view.