As we continued our course our eyes were greeted by the sight of much that Lander and his successors had only dreamed of as the possible to be. Already trade had laid a prosaic hand on the great highway of Tale and Travel--the river sacred to romance, whose “golden sands,” by the alchemy of its touch, are now transmuted to a golden freight of palm oil. The surging screws, the puff of steam and clang of machinery, break the impressive stillness of the forest, and fill the tropic air with their unhallowed echoes, driving the hippo from his favourite pool, the crocodile from the yellow sand-bank. Amid such sounds, the shrill scream of the parrot, and the indignant chatter of the monkey, strike upon the ear with a strange sense of incongruity. Here and there the graceless front of a trading station, with its whitewashed corrugated iron walls and roof of European design, glares forth unblushingly from its bosky niche of palm and silk cotton tree. Thence issues the matter of fact trader--no longer in the picturesque disarray of the “palm oil ruffian,” but resplendent in the dazzling glory of a well-starched shirt and snow white duck trousers--who strolls down to the landing-place through a garden aglow with sunflowers and walks shaded by a canopy of trailing vines and other creepers. [Illustration: TRADERS’ HOUSE, ABUTSHI.] The natives around the station share in the unromantic changes. They still carry about with them an air of picturesque sansculottic barbarity, but jarring elements have been superadded. The negro has degenerated into that hybrid creature the “nigger,” bids you “good morning” as he asks for a pipe of tobacco or a nip of gin, or calls your attention to his lawn-tennis hat--the latest fashion, and almost his sole dress. The only circumstance which serves to maintain an air of romance about him is the knowledge we possess that he still loves his neighbour to the extent of becoming at times literally one flesh with him. Everywhere there is evidence that the trader is in possession. The missionary has accompanied him, eager in the cause of Christ and humanity. Not unfrequently the sweet tones of the church bell may be heard ringing silver clear from the cathedral gloom of the forest. They call, alas! to those who will not hear, though doubtless to the yearning ear of faith those sweetly solemn sounds shape themselves into a prophecy of the coming good destined to re-echo some day through every forest depth and wide waste of jungle.