‘So withered and so wild in their attire, That look not like th’ inhabitants o’ th’ earth, And yet are on’t’— planted their shoulder-cloths, their rude crates, and their coarse weirs upon the muddy inlets where fish abounded. The sky was sparkling blue, the water was bluer, and over both spread the thinnest blue haze, tempering raw tones of colour to absolute beauty. On both sides of the shrinking stream a dense curtain of many-tinted vegetation, ‘Yellow and black, and pale and hectic red,’ shadowed swirling pools, where the current swept over the growth of intertwisted fibres. The stunted Mkindu, brab or wild date (Phœnix sylvestris), much used for mats, contrasted with the Nakhl el Shaytan, or Devil’s Date (Raphia Vinifera), which, eccentric in form and frondage, curved arms sometimes 30 and even 35 feet long, over the dancing wave: this dwarf-giant of the palms has no trunk to speak of, but each midrib is thick as a man’s thigh, and the vegetable kingdom cannot show such length of foliage. Not a few of the trees were so distinguished by oppositions of tall and sturdy trunk supporting frail and tender belongings, that they seemed to bear leaves and blossoms not their own. Upon the watery margin large lilies of snowy robe, some sealed by day, others wide expanded and basking in light and air, gleamed beautifully against the black-green growth and the clear bitumen-brown of the bank-water. In scattered spots were inhuman traces of human presence; tall arecas and cocoas waving over a now impenetrable jungle; whilst plantains, sugar-canes, limes, and bitter oranges, choked with wild verdure, still lingered about the broken homestead and around the falling walls, blackened by the murderer’s fire. And above all reigned the peculiar African and tropical stillness of noontide, deep and imposing, broken only by the curlew’s scream or by the tepid breeze rustling the tree-tops in fitful gusts, whispering among the matted foliage, and swooning away upon the warm bosom of the wave.