UP THE RIVER OF TAPIRS 145 



Part of the time we crossed or skirted marshy plains. In 

 one of them a herd of half-wild cattle was feeding. Herons, 

 storks, ducks, and ibises were in these marshes, and we saw 

 one flock of lovely roseate spoonbills. 



In one grove the fig-trees were killing the palms, just 

 as in Africa they kill the sandalwood-trees. In the gloom 

 of this grove there were no flowers, no bushes; the air 

 was heavy; the ground was brown with mouldering leaves. 

 Almost every palm was serving as a prop for a fig-tree. 

 The fig-trees were in every stage of growth. The young- 

 est ones merely ran up the palms as vines. In the next 

 stage the vine had thickened and was sending out shoots, 

 wrapping the palm stem in a deadly hold. Some of the 

 shoots were thrown round the stem like the tentacles of 

 an immense cuttlefish. Others looked like claws, that were 

 hooked into every crevice, and round every projection. In 

 the stage beyond this the palm had been killed, and its 

 dead carcass appeared between the big, winding vine- 

 trunks; and later the palm had disappeared and the vines 

 had united into a great fig-tree. Water stood in black 

 pools at the foot of the murdered trees, and of the trees 

 that had murdered them. There was something sinister 

 and evil in the dark stillness of the grove; it seemed as 

 if sentient beings had writhed themselves round and were 

 strangling other sentient beings. 



We passed through wonderfully beautiful woods of tall 

 palms, the ouaouaga palm — wawasa palm, as it should be 

 spelled in English. The trunks rose tall and strong and 

 slender, and the fronds were branches twenty or thirty feet 

 long, with the many long, narrow green blades starting 

 from the midrib at right angles in pairs. Round the ponds 



