The Pools of Silence

k next morning the

ong way after came the porters and their loads, shepherded by ha

ers tramping under their loads a hum like the hum of an awakened beehive. These people will talk and chatter when the sun rises;

lumps of palms; then, all at once, and like plunging under a gree

straightening themselves and sighing toward heaven after the long, damp, chilly night. The tropical forest at daybreak flings its arms up to the sun as if to embrace him, and all the teeming life it holds gives

muffled by the trees, they could hear the shrill whistling of

and there the forest thinned out and a riot of umbrella thorns, vicious, sword-like grass and tall, dull purple flowers, like hollyhocks made a scrub that choked t

ly to analyze the extraordinary and new sens

t Yandjali he had felt himself in a foreign country, but still in touch with Europe and the past; a mile deep in th

ay lose one's direction, but one can never lose oneself amidst the friendly p

s, as we tramp through the sweltering sap-scented gloo

nes and tendrils and hung about with leaves. Nothing is beautiful here, but everything is curious. It is a curiosity shop, where one pays with the sweat of one's brow, with the langu

, where echo sound

d the tree boles just around, yet the p

way or quite close, or to the right, or to the left, or whether it is caused by a branch

d do the work, and he works in his own lazy fashion, leavi

y recognize it, because the processes are so slow, but if five years of the jungle could be photographed week by week, and the whole series be run rapidly off on some huge cinematograph machine, you would see a heaving and

trees and the python-like loops of the lianas, one can see the struggle crystallized

off from the world which has progressed toward civilization, alone with the beasts and the trees, they have lived here without a guide a

rible and pathetic attempt of a predamned people to raise their heads and walk er

and warring with each other, and the others, the milder and kindlier tribes, led their own comparatively quiet life; and Mohammed was born somewhere in the u

tendom was the event which in far distant years was

but here the fact is, that white men, Christian men, have taken these people, have drawn under the banner of Christianity and under Christian pay all the warlike tribes, armed them, and s

a sound as of some huge animal approaching. Berselius half t

earers," s

le, their burdens on their heads, and when the leaders saw the white men they stopped dead. A great chattering broke out. One could hear it going back all along th

nty Kwanga on their heads, and besides this burden-they were

's district. The tax laid on this village was three hundred c

in England, you can fancy the trouble of making such people-savages living in a t

ed cakes of cassava every eight days, the whole village must work literally like

be brought about, and the heavier and sharper the punishments inflicte

amongst them who looked more like shrivelled monkeys than human beings; extraordinary anatomical specimens, whose muscles, working as they ran, were as visible as thou

cially to shock the eye of the European, for it is the long-prepared treason against this people, devised and carr

very would have been visible, would have appealed to the heart; but the black mass could not express these

at he had seen and the only impression the

ed as the crowd passed by. Four of

wrist in three cases, and one woman had suff

rselius, who did not s

then pushed on, camping for the night, after a tw