Indeed, I do not think that if
I live to a hundred I shall ever forget that desolate and yet most
fascinating scene; it is stamped upon my memory. To the right and
left were wide stretches of lonely death-breeding swamp, unbroken and
unrelieved so far as the eye could reach, except here and there by ponds
of black and peaty water that, mirror-like, flashed up the red rays
of the setting sun. Behind us and before stretched the vista of the
sluggish river, ending in glimpses of a reed-fringed lagoon, on the
surface of which the long lights of the evening played as the faint
breeze stirred the shadows. To the west loomed the huge red ball of the
sinking sun, now vanishing down the vapoury horizon, and filling the
great heaven, high across whose arch the cranes and wildfowl streamed
in line, square, and triangle, with flashes of flying gold and the lurid
stain of blood. And then ourselves--three modern Englishmen in a
modern English boat--seeming to jar upon and look out of tone with that
measureless desolation; and in front of us the noble buck limned out
upon a background of ruddy sky.
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