We Knew It, We Said, In
The Foolishness Of Our Hearts Thinking They Meant The One We Had
Just Forded,
And leaving them resting, passed on our way; half-a-
mile further on we were wiser and sadder, for then
We stood on the
rim of one of the biggest swamps I have ever seen south of the
Rivers. It stretched away in all directions, a great sheet of
filthy water, out of which sprang gorgeous marsh plants, in islands,
great banks of screw pine, and coppices of wine palm, with their
lovely fronds reflected back by the still, mirror-like water, so
that the reflection was as vivid as the reality, and above all
remarkable was a plant, {241} new and strange to me, whose pale-
green stem came up out of the water and then spread out in a
flattened surface, thin, and in a peculiarly graceful curve. This
flattened surface had growing out from it leaves, the size, shape
and colour of lily of the valley leaves; until I saw this thing I
had held the wine palm to be the queen of grace in the vegetable
kingdom, but this new beauty quite surpassed her.
Our path went straight into this swamp over the black rocks forming
its rim, in an imperative, no alternative, "Come-along-this-way"
style. Singlet, who was leading, carrying a good load of bottled
fish and a gorilla specimen, went at it like a man, and disappeared
before the eyes of us close following him, then and there down
through the water.
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