THE MANGROVE 61 



reason of the similarity of its name to that of a 

 totally different class of tree, as some beautiful 

 forest growth, covered with rich, luscious fruit, and 

 bright mth balsamic clusters of tropical flowers. 

 It is my duty to remove this illusion. The man- 

 grove {Rhizophoracece) is a horrible excrescence on 

 the face of the African coast. There is something 

 about it so unnatural, so abnormal, that the effect 

 it produces upon one is the reverse of pleasing. It 

 springs from mud, and thrives in the blackest, most 

 treacherous, and most forbidding of ooze. It 

 consists in East Africa of two different species, the 

 red and the white, both of which, as I have just 

 pointed out, thrust their rapidly increasing and 

 obnoxious presence at all points under your very 

 nose. Its horrible, nightmare-like, arching roots 

 descend into the mud like the clumsy, slimy 

 foundations of some prehistoric crinoline, from the 

 centre of which the trunk springs. The lower 

 limbs throw down tufts of roots, which strike on 

 reaching the mud beneath, and throw up other 

 members of the same unlovely family. Within the 

 mangrove forests, moreover, there is always darkness 

 and gloom. The tree produces a sombre, ever- 

 green leaf, and grows so close to its neighbour that 

 the foliage, uniting, shuts out the day. In the 

 semi-twilight thus produced you see, in your 

 mournful, squelching progress through this moist, 

 muddy land of disordered dreams, the ghostly night- 

 jar rise noiselessly from beneath your feet ; a horned 

 owl glares suspicious disapproval ; a scuttling brood 

 of hideous land crabs disappear down their yawn- 

 ing, muddy holes ; and a huge, carnivorous iguana. 



