大象传媒

Mountains of the Moon - Chapter 2

Later, we strolled down to the Banshee again, where we met a famous character in the form of an old elephant hunter of more than thirty years' experience. Despite the early hour, he was quite definitely "under the influence" and was quite convinced that "the Navy wanted a drink damn you, you Irish....!!" Well, we accepted the proffered drinks, if only to stop the unholy flow of abuse, and sat down and pumped him for all we worth for some of his experiences, and spent a pleasant couple of hours or so . Getting away, however, was another kettle of fish altogether, but we managed it after several for the road and neatly side-tracked an invitation to join him in another of the famous round the clock sessions, scheduled for that evening.

On returning to our hotel, we had an early dinner, and were preparing for an early bed, pending a further long hop the next day, when we received the jolt of our lives. There was a knock at the door, and our room-boy appeared with two dusky maidens, giggling in the rear, and we were asked if we desired a "bebe" each for the night. Luckily Maurice retained the power of speech - I was completely bereft - and dealt with the situation promptly, redirecting them to the hut housing our two old sergeant pals, whilst I regarded the unusual tableau with goggling eyes, over the edge of the sheets. Luckily, the two old boys had their door safely fastened, otherwise there would have been "hell to pay". Old Len, for all his bluff and bluster, gets all hot and bothered wherever females are concerned under normal circumstances, so goodness knows what would have happened if the two fair damsels had caught him in his woollies.

There followed a peaceful night, behind locked doors, for us too, sleep broken only in the morning by the incessant thrumming of some tribal drums. This, so the boys informed us, told of a party of dancers and some native celebrations, to which all, within hearing, were invited - there must have been a huge crowd there, according to my reckoning.

Eight o'clock saw us once more on our way, travelling through luxuriant growth, almost jungle, which greatly restricted the view. All this changed, however, at mile 50, when, after an hour's steady climb, the road commenced a six and a half mile series of "dangerous corners", as a P.W.D. notice informed us. Dangerous corners was right, too, for the road, all on an upward trend, and a steep one at that, twisted and turned like a snake in agony. On one side the mountain-side towered right out of sight, into the clouds and the mist, whilst on the other it fell away, sheer, often for two or three hundred rock and boulder strewn feet, to be lost in mass of truly equatorial forest. As may be imagined, after such a climb, with the engine often screaming like a tortured thing, on particularly steep parts of the climb, and on wicked hairpin corners as well, we all felt like a blow when we reached the top. Here, we all piled out for a good look around, and found ourselves at the top of a deep cleft in the range we had been climbing. Looking back, we could see, dwarfed by distance and altitude, mile upon mile of equatorial forest in all imaginable shades of green, seemingly brooding sombrely beneath the mysterious mantle of mist and the glaring brilliance of the sun.

Meanwhile, shivering a little, and actually in the clouds, we turned with something like a shudder, to gaze down the Valley of the Clouds, and saw Lake Lutoto glistening, I thought, evilly, far below, with our first view of Lake George in the distance. It was then that I noticed the absolute, all pervading silence of the place - silence that could be felt!!

Silence upon which our voices, grown unconsciously loud, fell, and were immediately swallowed up like a raindrop in the ocean, making us seem like intruders and violators of a peace and tranquillity, albeit sinister, as old as time itself.
Silence, that after a while, brought even our chatter to a halt, so that we stood quietly watching the clouds rolling in the valley below.

I don't know just how long we stood there, but I do know that the roar of our restarted engine made me start, and I noticed that the grins of the others, returning from "realms of thought unfathomed" were a trifle sheepish. In silence, we climbed aboard and, in silence, we commenced to move, and it was not until a bad skid, on a dangerous corner had relieved the tension, that the flow of talk resumed its previous proportions. Down and down we went, twisting and turning and skidding into the gloom, the dampness and, by now, oppressive silence of the tropical forest, which seemed so fitting a carpet to this cloud-enveloped valley.

As if to give us a fitting welcome to this dismal district, rain began to teem down, with true tropical proportions, so that the road, already sticky as a result of some previous shower, soon became a veritable sea of black mud. Often progressing crab-wise, seldom straight, we finally reached the level of the Lake, now seen as glimpses of dull, motionless, grey, sluggish fluid. Finding that we were now once more in a native village, or rather, the market place, we once more alighted, but lingered only long enough to replenish our much-depleted stock of fruit. Here prices, if such they may be called, were even lower than before. This time we bought well over one hundred and fifty bananas and ten oranges for fifty cents (about sixpence - two and a half "new" pence), and various other local fruits for similar sums.

They were a poor set, these natives - small and under-nourished. The old ones were crouched and shrivelled, whilst the children looked frail and sickly, and all looked cold and altogether wretched, and with a sad, shy, almost frightened look in their eyes, engendered, no doubt, by the heavy silence and everlasting half-light of this dismal valley.

Altogether, I found the Valley of the Clouds depressing, and I rather fancy that even the native drivers were glad to get away, for the old bus fairly leapt along the now level stretch over open country, on the way to Kazinga Channel, which we reached in record time.

Here, owing to the fact that the ferry, a twenty paddle-power pontoon, was on the other side of the Channel, another pause was necessary, so we started our picnic lunch of cold chicken, lettuce, tomato, etc. We were halfway through our picnic lunch when the ferry arrived. So, not relishing the possibility of a ducking in the channel, we all evacuated the old bus and left the driver to "place" the darned thing on the pontoon, on his own. That done, we hopped aboard the ferry ourselves, and finished our lunch, before we started off for the other side. Just as well that we did too, for the stench that arose from those twenty paddlers, by the time that they had got well under way, beat the smell usually associated with a Lascar's fo'castle hollow, so we all with one accord lit up pipes and cigarettes as a counterblast. It was here, incidentally, that one of the lads palled up to a "bebe" who gave him some native "fags" (I refuse to give them the honour of calling them cigarettes) and naturally we all tried a puff or two. Those who took two puffs were heroes, for we were all immediately sorry for the experiment. They nearly blew our hats off and I for one resolved to stick to the faithful Player in the future.

On arrival at the other side we disembarked amidst much bawling and shouting from the paddlers, whilst a curious crowd of natives from a nearby village gazed open-mouthed at so many "muzungu" (white men) in one party. At long last, we were completely disembarked, and piling on the bus again, we left the crowd in a cloud of pungent fumes, and we were soon in the King George Game Reserve. Fortune smiled on us here, for we were lucky enough to sight several elephants, one quite near, a buck, gazelle of all kinds and sizes, warthogs but, unfortunately, no buffalo. However, we made a wide detour right out on the promontory on Lake Edward where we had the luck to see a herd of about fifty hippo's only ten yards, or so, away. Frantic clicking of cameras this time, as you may imagine.

From here we broke away "inland" again into wilder country as we approached the foothills of the Ruwenzori Mountains. The growth was wilder and if possible, more luxuriant and the whole country had that rich, damp, earthy smell - a result of recent heavy rains I suppose. Later, as we neared the range itself, the semi-jungle gave way to wide, rich grasslands with frequent barren rocky outcrops and cut by many raging mountain streams over which the road crossed by very flimsy-looking trestle bridges. Then, as the road reached the base of the Range itself, we were all enthralled as we sat there, watching fascinated, the ever-changing skyline, as the tumbled mass of snow-covered peaks appeared, passed and fell away behind us. We passed mile upon mile of awe-inspiring grandeur that absolutely beggars description. For my part I could have sat and gazed for hours at just one of those lovely scenes. There were hundreds, each better than the last, and after all, we had a destination to reach, although I must confess that I was not very pleased to think that we were only permitted those few precious minutes in which to store up memories to last a lifetime.

Called variously the Ruwenzories, the Rain Mountains, the Mountains of the Moon (the latter because they are said to be at their best by the light of the moon) are said to be the mountains that figure in Rider Haggard's book "King Solomon's Mines". Later, we were fortunate enough to witness the rare sight of the filmy mantle of mist rise clear of the Twin Peaks, the Sheba's Breasts of the book I have mentioned. Soon, however, due to the fact that we were down in the valley and the sun was setting behind the mountains, the shadows lengthened and with darkness setting in earlier than we had expected, we saw little of the forest belt through which we had to pass, to reach our next hotel. All we saw was a long tunnel, flanked on either side by the trunks of trees while their branches met overhead and glistened silver in the light of our powerful headlights. Arriving at Fort Portal at about 8.30 pm we carried on to the hotel and there followed the, by now, familiar routine of bath, dinner and bed.

Awakening fresh and ready for anything, with no thanks to the houseboys, who were the laziest, most sullen crowd I have seen for a long time, two others of our party and I set out to see the District Commissioner as we had heard the previous night that there was a mountain pass over the Range, to a pigmy village. We were received most cordially by him but he assured us that he considered the pass to be rather too much for us, and then had the crust to say that his wife had done it on several occasions. Well, naturally, that really did put us on our toes and we decided then and there that we would at least have a jolly good shot at it. However, we did take his advice to the extent that we decided to do the climb from the other side of the Range, instead of carrying out our original intention of going over and back in one day. Accordingly, we arranged to go round and have a look first and, as luck would have it, a coffee lorry, a Bedford truck with a native driver, was just about to start out for the other side of the Range, so we clambered aboard, and away we went. The truck was pretty new and the driver one of the usual hare-brained speed merchants, so we had plenty of thrills, even on the flat. Naturally, when we began to get to some of the more dangerous parts of the road, we expected him to slow up a little, but apparently this particular driver had only two speeds - flat out or sweet "fanny adams". I didn't notice much, if any, of the latter so we just sat very tight and hoped for the best. There was nothing else to do, anyway. Well, the Waza and Buranga Passes are 5,200 feet and 4,000 feet respectively but there are a helluva lot of variations of altitude in between. Furthermore, they consist of six and a half, and eleven and a half miles respectively of dangerous corners that put the approach to the Valley of the Clouds to shame. It is useless to even try to describe just what that road was like. In this case, instead of hundreds, the drops were more conveniently measured in thousands of feet, whilst the road itself was little better than a cart-track, perched on an artificial and very insecure looking ledge.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Such things as shocking surfaces, dizzy drops, hair-raising hairpin turns, on the edge of nothing and suchlike, although giving us far more thrills than we wanted, seemed to have no affect on our driver. In fact he seemed to be treating the whole affair as a huge joke. Stops for photographs and recovery of breath, incidentally, were frequent, but owing to the intensity of the sun's glare, few of the many snaps taken proved successful. One in particular would have been a wonderful one had a light filter been available. Halfway down the Buranga Pass the road makes a sharp three-quarter turn, right on the edge of a 1,500 foot sheer drop and here there is unfolded some fifty-odd miles of the great Semilika River. The ranges of the Belgian Congo mountains form a formidable background to a broad valley, completely covered with dense forest and swamps. The Semilika can be seen wending an extremely tortuous course roughly down the centre of the huge valley in a series of immense curves; and over all, there is a thin film of slowly moving mist drawn up by the sun's terrific heat.

Gazing out over this lovely and stupendous scene I felt very small and insignificant - the war seemed very far away indeed.

Descending still farther we had a fine bird's eye view of the Hot Springs, noticeable at once by the gouts of steam and boiling water that were easily seen from our position although we were well over four miles from them. Naturally we were eager to see this phenomenon at close quarters, but were rather hesitant when we found the place already in the possession of a small army of baboons, some of the most fierce-some looking creatures I have ever seen - gave me quite a chilly feeling down the spine. Luckily however they preferred to give us their room rather than their company, so we advanced to inspect the springs at leisure.

The heat from both above and below was terrific and exhausting whilst the very distinct smell of sulphur; the somewhat alarming gurglings coming from the ground; the hissing of the steam and the occasional trembling of the ground reminded me of my childhood conceptions of the Nether Regions and I guess that's about as near as I wish to get to them too. Time will tell. The native "crew" of the truck did no more than choose the colder pools a little removed from the main springs, off with their clothes (what there were of them), out soap and indulge in a first-class bath whilst a number of cooking bananas bubbled and bumped in one of the lesser springs being sufficiently cooked to be edible by the time they had finished their bathing operations. Much to our disappointment, however, it was impossible to approach the main springs as the "boys" declared it to be too dangerous and flatly refused to show us the way or wait for us while we went on our own. Somewhat disgruntled therefore, perspiring freely absolutely wet through with vapour, smelling like an experiment in the lab gone wrong, we climbed back aboard and were whisked with alarming suddenness from the intense heat and glare of the barren region around the springs into the cool gloom of the immense Ituri Forest.

Here everything seemed to close in upon us; even the swish of our passage through the brush encroaching upon the road was thrown back at us with interest and yet, despite the at first apparent overbearing silence, when one stopped to listen, one could hear a thousand queer noises and mysterious rustlings, all subdued as if loath to encroach upon the background of the awesome solemnity of the everlasting silence of the Forest itself. Giant trees stood on either side of the track, meeting overhead in a dense tangle of foliage over the road, almost completely blotting out the sun, giving the impression of perpetual twilight.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.