The most ambitious
efforts were designs in whitewashed shells and protruding beer
bottles. We could not help remembering the gardens in Japan, of the
poorest and the most ignorant coolies. Do I seem to find fault with
Banana out of all proportion to its importance? It is because
Banana, the Congo's most advanced post of civilization, is typical
of all that lies beyond.
From what I had read of the Congo I expected a broad sweep of muddy,
malaria-breeding water, lined by low-lying swamp lands, gloomy,
monotonous, depressing.
But on the way to Boma and, later, when I travelled on the Upper
Congo, I thought the river more beautiful than any great river I had
ever seen. It was full of wonderful surprises. Sometimes it ran
between palm-covered banks of yellow sand as low as those of the
Mississippi or the Nile; and again, in half an hour, the banks were
rock and as heavily wooded as the mountains of Montana, or as white
and bold as the cliffs of Dover, or we passed between great hills,
covered with what looked like giant oaks, and with their peaks
hidden in the clouds. I found it like no other river, because in
some one particular it was like them all. Between Banana and Boma
the banks first screened us in with the tangled jungle of the
tropics, and then opened up great wind-swept plateaux, leading to
hills that suggested--of all places--England, and, at that,
cultivated England. The contour of the hills, the shape of the
trees, the shade of their green contrasted with the green of the
grass, were like only the cliffs above Plymouth.
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