Noon
brings out every variety of distance with startling distinctness, and
night, especially moonlit night, blurs with its mists long tracts of
forest, rains silver over the ridges, and leaves the hollows in the
blackest shade. Seen from above, the sea of trees looks like green water
raised to waves by the wind, and the rustling in the breeze mimics the
sound of distant surf.
A catamaran of four cork-trees, a cranky canoe, the landing-place of a
bush-road, a banana-plantation, and a dwarf clearing, where sat a family
boiling down palm-nuts for oil, proved that here and there the lowland did
not lack lowlanders. The people stared at us without surprise, although
this was only the fourth time they had seen a surf-boat. The river-bed,
grid-ironed with rocky reefs, showed us twenty-two turns in a few miles;
some were horseshoe-bends, sweeping clean round to the south, and one
described a curve of 170?. After slow and interrupted paddling for an hour
and a half, at 6 P.M., when night neared, we halted at the village of
Esubeyah, or 'Water-made;' [Footnote: The radical of water is 'su,'
curiously corresponding with Turkish and with that oldest of the Turkish
tongues, Chinese.
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