UP STREAM. 



153 



aback, so abrupt are the windings of the bed. At 

 last we were successful in turning the first dan- 

 gerous angle : here, where sea-breeze and tide 

 meet the buffing stream, forming a ' Lahr,' as 

 the Baloch call it, navigation becomes perilous 

 to small craft. There is, as usual at and near 

 the mouths of African rivers where the water 

 acts as wind conductor, a little gale blowing up- 

 stream, a valuable aid to craft bound inland, but 

 not without its risks ; here many a boat has filled 

 and sunk beneath the ridge of short chopping 

 waves. After five miles, during which the 

 turbulent river, streaked with lines of froth, 

 gradually narrowed, we found it barely brackish, 

 and somewhat farther it was sweet as the cele- 

 brated creek-water of Guiana. 



Often since that day, while writing amid the 

 soughing blasts, the dashing rain, and the darkened 

 air of a wet season in West Africa and the Brazil, 

 have I remembered with yearning the bright and 

 beautiful spectacle of those Zangian streams, 

 whose charm, like the repose of the dead, seems 

 heightened by proximity to decay. We had soon 

 exchanged the amene and graceful, though some- 

 what tame scenery of the sandstone formation on 

 the seaboard, for a view most novel and charac- 

 teristic. Behemoth now reared his head from the 



