Читать книгу The Land of Fetish онлайн

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On the other side of the creek I entered upon a swampy region, consisting of stretches of sand and small lagoons surrounded by dwarf mangroves; and after splashing through the last of these I found myself in front of a dense growth of grass, eight or nine feet high. I thought that if all the open country of which I had heard were like this I should not care much about it, and rode into the narrow path which lay before me. The grass closed overhead, and I could see nothing in front but a long green tunnel, with occasional flecks of gold on the sand where the sunlight broke through. The grass was heavy with dew; a continual shower-bath of drops fell on me from above, and the long wet stems brushed my legs on either side. I should have enjoyed it very much if I had been unprovided with clothes, but I had not anticipated this bath, and was consequently dressed.

After a couple of miles of this I emerged into an open plain, as thoroughly wet through as if I had been towed behind a boat for a quarter of an hour; but the view compensated for any little discomfort. The country was of a dead level, covered with waving grass of a most brilliant green, and dotted with clumps of palm and monkey-bread trees; plantations of corn and ground-nuts appeared here and there; the deserted barracks of Cape St. Mary glistened white in the sun from a sand-ridge in the front; while to the left was the dense vegetation and rich colouring of a tropical forest. In the foreground were several of those peculiar trees which bear no leaves when in blossom, covered with their scarlet tulip-like flowers, while herds of cattle in the distance gave the scene almost a pastoral aspect. There may not seem very much in this to cause ecstasy, but nobody who has not sojourned for some months on the Gold Coast, surrounded by its interminable and depressing bush, can understand the delight with which a little open country may be greeted. The monkey-bread is not a handsome tree, and might be compared to a distorted semaphore or a corpulent sign-post. The trunks of these trees are sometimes immense, measuring from twenty to twenty-five feet in circumference, but they only throw out two or three stunted limbs, which can boast of but few twigs, and produce no leaves to speak of.