Then there is the strong African teak, the camwood, the African mahogany, the green-heart, the lignum vitæ, the everlasting iron-wood, the no less hard yellow wood by the riverside, infinitely harder than an oak; the stink-wood, the ebony, the copal-wood tree with its glossy and burnished foliage, the arborescent wild mango, the small-leaved wild orange, the silver-boled wild fig, the butter tree, the acacia tribes, the stately mpafu, and the thousands of wild fruit-trees, most of which are unknown to me. Therefore, to understand what this truly tropical forest is like you must imagine all these confusedly mixed together, and lashed together by millions of vines, creepers, and giant convolvuli, until a perfect tangle has been formed, and sunshine quite shut out, except a little flickering dust of light here and there to tell you that the sun is out in the sky like a burning lustrous orb. Considering how many months we were in the forest, the hundreds of miles we travelled through and through it, it is not the least wonder that an accident never befell one of the Expedition from the beginning to the end of our life in it, from the fall of a branch or a tree. Trees have fallen immediately before the van, and directly after the rear guard had passed; they have suddenly crashed to the earth on our flanks, and near the camps, by night as well as by day. The nearest escape we had was soon after we had landed from our boat one day, when a great ruin dropped into the river close to the stern, raising the boat up high with the mound of water raised by it, and spraying the crew who were at work.