Every contrast was there of light and dark, short and tall, thick and
thin; of age and death with lusty youth clinging around it; of the cocoa's
drooping frond and the aspiring arm of bombax, the silk-cotton-tree, which
rains brown gossamer when the wind blows; of the sloth-tree with its
topping tuft, and the tangled mantle of the calamus or rattan, a palm like
a bamboo-cane. The bristly pod of the dolichos (_pruriens_) hangs by the
side of the leguminosae, from whose flattened, chestnut-coloured seeds
snuff-boxes are made further east. It was also a _floresta florida_, whose
giants are decked with the tender little blossoms of the shrub, and where
the bright bracts and yellow greens of this year's growth light up the
sombre verdure of an older date. The type of this growth is the red
camwood-tree, with its white flower of the sweetest savour. Imagine an
English elm studded with pinks or daisies, gardenias or hyacinths. There
is nothing more picturesque than the shiftings and changes of aspect upon
these African streams, which at first seem so monotonous. After dawn the
smoking water, feeling tepid to the hand and warmer than the atmosphere,
veils the lower levels and makes the forest look as if based on air.
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