260 FROM THE NIGER TO THE NILE 



the undergrowth, the cruel side by side with the gentle, the 

 shrike with the tit, all friends in presence of the common 

 fear, the haunting fear that rests on the forest like a spell. 

 On and on the traveller presses through the gloom of the 

 perpetual twilight that has now become stifling ; the long 

 coils of the creepers hang down from the trees dripping 

 like dreadful watersnakes, and the ash-white rubber saplings 

 look like pale spectres in the gloom of the great trees. Then 

 the darkness, that at first seemed so peaceful and hushed, 

 grows terrible, like a live thing struggling in the meshes of 

 the trees, captive from some night that passed through the 

 forest long ago. And the traveller hastens on with eyes 

 thirsting for the light that lies ahead like a precious desert 

 pool where the trees at length give way. Here chattering 

 weaver birds in bright plumage of scarlet and black, and 

 tiny sun-birds of beautiful lustre hues, hovering round a 

 blossom tree in the sunlight, pass wonderful as a dream, 

 and in a few steps one is_ swallowed up again in the night 

 of the trees. 



With the exception of pigs and antelopes all the forest 

 animals are nocturnal in their habits, and so at night the 

 forest is never still. One would think to find sound stifled 

 in the denseness of the trees, but instead every stem is 

 a sounding-post vibrating with the noise of innumerable 

 forms of life, busy at their feeding. As one lies awake in the 

 native hut listening, so multitudinous, so ubiquitous, and from 

 so far do the noises come to assail the ear, that it seldom dis- 

 tinguishes the separate sounds, and is only vaguely conscious 

 of^a universal hum of cries and scratchings and cracklings 

 in the undergrowth, which at intervals seem shocked to 



