THE PRIMEVAL FORESTS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 203 



them to some weeks of complete inactivity. But the awakening 

 call of spring rings the more clearly through the sleeping wood; the 

 life which the first rains of the fertilizing season call forth stirs the 

 more powerfully after the rest of winter. 



I shall select spring-time in these countries to depict the primeval 

 forest as best I can. The south wind, herald and bearer of the rain- 

 clouds, must still be in contest with the cooling breezes from the 

 north if the forest is to reveal all its possible magnificence, and one 

 must penetrate to its heart by one of its arteries, the rivers, if one 

 wishes to see the fulness of its life. Let us take the Azrek or 

 "Blue Nile", rising in the mountains of Habesh, as our highway; 

 for with it are linked the most exquisite pictures which a long life 

 of travel have won for me, and I may prove a better guide on it 

 than on another. I very much doubt, however, whether I shall 

 prove such an interpreter of the forest as I should like to be. For 

 the primeval forest is a world full of splendour, and brilliance, and 

 fairy-like beauty; a land of marvels whose wealth no man has been 

 able fully to know, much less to carry away; a treasure-house which 

 scatters infinitely more than one can gather; a paradise in which 

 the creation seems to take shape anew day by day; an enchanted 

 circle which unfolds before him who enters it pictures, grand and 

 lovely, grave and gay, bright as daylight and sombre as night ; a 

 thousand integral parts making up a whole infinitely complex, yet 

 unified and harmonious, which baffles all description. 



One of the light little craft which one sees at Khartoum (the 

 capital of the Eastern Soudan, lying at the junction of the two Nile 

 streams) is transformed into a travelling boat, and bears us against 

 the waves of the much-swollen Azrek. The gardens of the last 

 houses of the capital disappear, and the steppe reaches down to the 

 very bank of the river. Here and there we still see a village, or 

 isolated huts lying prettily under mimosas and often surrounded by 

 creeping and climbing plants which hang from the trees; nothing 

 else is visible save the waving grass-forest and the few steppe trees 

 and shrubs which rise from its midst. But after a short journey the 

 forest takes possession of the bank, and spreads out its thorny or 

 spine-covered branches even beyond it. Thenceforward our pro- 



