It comes from the south-west, and it heads much
nearer the coast than is shown on paper.
Presently the blood-red sun sank like a fire-balloon into the
west, flushing with its last fierce beams the higher clouds of
the eastern sky, and lighting the white and black plume of the
soaring fish-eagle. This Gypohierax (Angolensis) is a very wild
bird, flushed at 200 yards: I heard of, but I never saw, the
Gwanyoni, which M. du Chaillu, (chapter xvi.) calls Guanionian,
an eagle or a vulture said to kill deer. Rain fell at times,
thunder, anything but "sweet thunder," again rolled in the
distance; and lightning flashed and forked before and behind us,
becoming painfully vivid in the shades darkening apace. We could
see nothing of the channel but a steel-grey streak, like a
Damascus blade, in a sable sheathing of tall mangrove avenue; in
places, however, tree-clumps suggested delusive hopes that we
were approaching a region where man can live. On our return we
found many signs of population which had escaped our sight during
the fast-growing obscurity. The first two reaches were long and
bulging; the next became shorter, and Prince Paul assured us
that, after one to the right, and another to the left, we should
fall into the direct channel.
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