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Updated: June 17, 2025
"The sky has lost most of that glorious color," mentioned the head pilot, "and before long now we can be hopping-off. Our first job will be to swing down the coast and learn if there seems to be anything going on among the southern islands in this beastly mangrove section where a man could easy enough lose himself for keeps among the countless water passages and inlets.
Just as we had finished our meal, and had lighted our manilas, the steersman turned the little launch sharply about, and headed directly for the shore. In a moment we had shot under and through the deep fringe of mangrove trees, and had emerged into the jungle. On all sides the trees rose, columnar and straight, and the ground was firm, although densely covered with ferns and vines.
Mangrove, that horror of the African voyager, shines by its absence; and the soil is not mud, but humus based on gravels or on ruddy clays, stiff and retentive. The formation, in fact, is everywhere that of Eyo or Yoruba, the goodly region lying west of the lower Niger, and its fertility must result from the abundant water supply of the equatorial belt. The charts are fearful to look upon.
About eight o'clock A.M. I got under weigh, with Peter Mangrove, on two good stout mules, and a black guide running before me with a long stick, with which he sprung over the sloughs and stones in the road with great agility; I would have backed him against many a passable hunter, to do four miles over a close country in a steeple chase. Panama is distant from Cruzes about seven leagues.
He saw, through it all, the wharf below the palace grounds, the fat old penager dozing in the sun, the raft they built together, and the birch-colored crocodiles that lay among the sinuous mangrove roots. "Noa," he whispered, as he imperiously motioned the crowd back. The dying man's lips moved. The Prince bent lower. "She loved you.
We took the two planks, which were about fourteen feet long, and two and a half wide, and fixed them together for the bottom of the boat; then with moulds made of palmetto bark, cut timber and knees from mangrove trees which spread so much as to make the boat four feet wide at the top, placed them exactly the distance apart of an Havana sugar box.
On the deltas and banks of all the rivers and creeks of North Queensland and on many of the more sheltered beaches, the mangrove flourishes, that ambitious tree which performs an important function in the scheme of Nature. Its botanical title reveals its special character Rhizaphora. Very diverse indeed are the means by which plants are distributed. While some are borne, some fly and others float.
"If I'm unkillable, Bork, what can you do?" The big man grinned back. "Flow rock around you up to your nose and toss you into a lake. You'd live there but you'd always be drowning and you'd find it slightly unpleasant for the next few thousand years! It's not as bad as being turned into a mangrove with your soul intact, but it would last longer.
Soon after passing the black rock before alluded to, I observed several figures stealing along the shore, in the covert of a row of mangrove bushes, and apparently watching our movements. When we had reached the edge of the surf, and were preparing to dash through it, they came out of the thicket, and with threatening gestures warned us away.
"It reminds me of a banyan tree with corrugated-iron foliage," he said, adding as he went into details, "In a dim light the finished room would pass for the trunk of the tree and the uprights for the supports of the branches." But the Maluka thought it looked more like a section of a mangrove swamp, piles and all.
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