In Darkest England
PART I.—THE DARKNESS.
CHAPTER L WHY "DARKEST ENGLAND"? This summer the attention of the civilised world has been arrested by the story which Mr. Stanley has told of " Darkest Africa " and his journeyings across the heart of the Lost Continent. In all that spirited narrative of heroic endeavour, nothing has so much impressed the imagination, as his description of the immense forest, which offered an almost impenetrable barrier to his advance. The intrepid explorer, in his own phrase, " marched, tore, ploughed, and cut his way for one hundred and sixty days through this inner womb of the true tropical forest." The mind of man with difficulty endeavours to realise this immensity of wooded wilderness, covering a territory half as large again as the whole of France, where the rays of the sun never penetrate, where in the dark, dank air, filled with the steam of the heated morass, human beings dwarfed into pygmies and brutalised into cannibals lurk and live and die. Mr. Stanley vainly endeavours to bring home to us the full horror of that awful gloom. He says :
Take a thick Scottish copse dripping with rain ; imagine this to be a mere undergrowth nourished under the impenetrable shade of ancient trees ranging from ioo to 180 feet high ; briars and thorns abundant; lazy creeks meandering through the depths of the jungle, and sometimes a deep affluent of a great river. Imagine this forest and jungle in all stages of decay and growth, rain pattering on you every other day of the year; an impure atmosphere with its dread consequences, fever and dysentery ; gloom throughout the day and darkness almost palpable throughout the night ; and then if you can imagine such a forest extending the entire distance from Plymouth to Peterhead, you will have a fair idea of some of the inconveniences endured by us in the Congo forest.
The denizens of this region are filled with a conviction that the forest is endless — interminable. In vain did Mr. Stanley and his companions endeavour to convince them that outside the dreary wood were to be found sunlight, pasturage and peaceful meadows.
-♦They replied in a manner that seemed to imply that we must be strange creatures to suppose that it would be possible for any world to exist save their