Chapter 18 - Ran Away to Sea by Mayne Reid
I pretended to express surprise, though I was bursting with laughter, for I had become quite satisfied as to the species of the bird. Indeed, the horrid effluvium that came from the filthy creature, as my companion carried it in front of me, was quite as strong as that of the carrion itself; and it was this reaching Ben’s nostrils that first led him to suspect the genuineness of the game. Ben would have known the bird had it been the Pondicherry vulture—for he had been to the East Indies, and had seen the latter—or the griffon vulture of yellowish colour, which he had seen at Gibraltar, and on the Nile; but this one was smaller than either, and was far more like a turkey than they. It was in reality a kind of vulture that is found in these parts of Africa, and is not known anywhere else; for since that time I have visited most parts of the world, and never saw another of the kind. No wonder, then, my companion was deceived—for he had never been at the place before, and had never seen the bird—but now that he had smelt it, there could be no longer any deception. No game could have emitted such an odour. It was nothing else than a stinking vulture.
The expression upon Ben’s face, as he flung the creature from him, was ludicrous in the extreme, and I could have laughed at him with all my might, but that I did not wish to add to my companion’s chagrin. I therefore approached the bird, and examining it with a look of pretended surprise, gave an affirmative rejoinder to Ben’s emphatic declaration. Leaving it where it had been thrown, we again faced forward, and jogged leisurely along in hopes of finding some sweeter game.
We had not gone much farther when we entered a forest of palm-trees, and one of the ardent longings of my youth here met with its full gratification. If there was anything in foreign lands I had longed particularly to behold, it was a forest of palm-trees. I had heard that such existed in South America, Africa, and in the Indian countries, and I had read some descriptions of them. But I now perceived that the most glowing description can impart but a very imperfect idea of the beautiful reality, for no work of Nature I have ever looked upon has given me more delight than this—the aspect of a palm-wood. There are many species of palms that do not grow in forests, but only as single individuals, or groups of two or three together, in the midst of other trees. Of course, too, there are many sorts of palms, more or less fine looking, since it is believed that there are at least one thousand species in existence. All are not equally beautiful to look upon, for some are stunted, others have crooked stems; still, others have short mis-shapen trunks; and not a few appear with their leaves on the surface of the ground, as if without stems altogether.
The sort of palm, however, that constituted the forest into which my companion and I had now penetrated, was one of the most magnificent of the whole tribe. I did not then know what species it was, but since I have learnt all about it. It was no other than the oil-palm, called by the natives of Western Africa the “Mava,” and by botanists “Elais Guiniensis,” which, when translated into plain English, means the “oil-palm of Guinea.”
It is a palm that somewhat resembles the beautiful cocoa, and by botanists is placed in the same family. The trunk is very tall, of less than a foot in diameter, and rising in a straight shaft to the height of nearly a hundred feet. On the top is a splendid head of leaves like gigantic ostrich plumes, that gracefully curve over on all sides, forming a shape like a parachute. Each leaf is full five yards in length, and of the kind called pinnate—that is divided into numerous leaflets, each of which is itself more than a foot and a half long, shaped like the blade of a rapier. Under the shadow of this graceful plumage the fruit is produced, just below the point where the leaves radiate from the stem. The fruit is a nut, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, but of a regular oval form, and growing in large clusters, after the manner of grapes. Around the shell is a thick fleshy covering, very similar to that which encloses the common walnut, only more of an oily substance and glutinous texture, and it is from this very substance that the oil is manufactured. Oil can also be extracted from the kernel, and this last, though more difficult to be obtained, is of a superior quality than that taken from the pulp of the rind.
Nothing in the vegetable world can be more beautiful than a full-grown specimen of the oil-palm, with its cluster of ripe fruit, their bright-yellow colour contrasting finely with the deep-green of its long curling fronds, that seem intended, as it were, to protect the rich bunches from the too powerful rays of a tropic sun. I say nothing in the vegetable world can be more beautiful than this, unless, indeed, it be a whole forest of such trees; just such a forest as my companion and I had now entered. Even the rude sailor was impressed by the grandeur of the spectacle that surrounded us, and we both stopped mechanically to gaze upon and admire it.
Far as the eye could reach rose a succession of straight trunks, that looked as if they had been shaped by mechanical skill and were only columns supporting the verdant canopy above, and this canopy from the curling of the fronds and the regular division of the leaflets, appeared to form grand arches, fretted and chased in the most elaborate manner. From the columns, near their tops, hung the rich-yellow clusters, like golden grapes, their brilliant colour adding to the general effect, while the ground underneath was strewed with thousands of the egg-like nuts, that had fallen from over-ripeness, and lay scattered over the surface. It looked like some grand temple of Ceres, some gigantic orchard of Nature’s own planting!
I have thought—but long after that time—I have thought that if King Dingo Bingo had but set his poor captives, and his bloody myrmidons as well, to gather that golden crop, to press the oil from those pulpy pericarps, what a fortune he might have been honestly the master of, and what unhappiness he might have spared to thousands in whose misery alone he was now making traffic!