The African sketch-book . the way among the streets of water, whichare as numerous and labyrinthine as those of a greattown. More than once in these African deltas I havetaken the wrong turning and spent the night out ofdoors. We started with the tide and sea-breeze, keepingwell out in the middle of the stream. Flocks of snow-white birds gleamed upon the surface of the water, whichwas ruffled here and there by shoals of fish. We couldalso see canoes in the distance, looking intensely black,and resembling buoys : they were motionless and appa-rently unoccupied ; but when we came close we found
The African sketch-book . the way among the streets of water, whichare as numerous and labyrinthine as those of a greattown. More than once in these African deltas I havetaken the wrong turning and spent the night out ofdoors. We started with the tide and sea-breeze, keepingwell out in the middle of the stream. Flocks of snow-white birds gleamed upon the surface of the water, whichwas ruffled here and there by shoals of fish. We couldalso see canoes in the distance, looking intensely black,and resembling buoys : they were motionless and appa-rently unoccupied ; but when we came close we found ineach of them a negro lying at full length, with a footdangling over each gunwale, and a fishing-line tied toeach great toe. Towards the afternoon the wind changedand the tide turned, and then other canoes came drifting Book I] THE FOREST 3i downwards with the ebb, their owners also being fastasleep. In one of these a bush was stuck in the prow,and acted as a mast and sail—no doubt the earliestcontrivance of its We now diverged from the main road into a narrowcreek, lined with mangrove bushes, beneath the tangledarcades of which was a floor of black mud, inhabited bycrabs with brightly painted claws, and burrowing likerabbits ; also by curious creatures, half newt, half fish,which skipped along with a duck-and-drake motioncurious to behold. More curious still were the oystersgrowing on trees ; for the outside mangroves stood inthe water up to their waists, and their lower parts wereencrusted with these molluscs, which the ebb exposedto view, and which thus led an amphibious existence,half in the water and half in the air. Behind the mangroves rose a hieh ereen wall of 32 THE FOREST [Book I forest trees, with open sunlit spaces like windows,here and there. Monkeys chirped from their hiding-places in the leaves, or jumped with a crash from treeto tree. Parrots, with their red tails flaming in the sun,flew high above us, uttering the whistle so familiar toour ears. As th
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