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Updated: June 17, 2025
Far away on either side were the low-growing tangled growths of mangrove which represented the river's banks near the sea, and toward these banks, from both sides of the wake, water birds could be seen winging their way, frightened from their feeding ground by the Cormorant's rush.
I had before shot a species much smaller than this one, which had a number of hard globular palm-fruits in its crop, each more than an inch in diameter. A little further the path divided into two, one leading along the beach, and across mangrove and sago swamps the other rising to cultivated grounds.
Sometimes we pass below lofty bluffs, by wild rocky shores and islets, sometimes along great stretches of mud-bank or mangrove swamp. The land on all sides is a primitive wilderness for the most part. Range after range sweeps and rolls away, while ravines and gullies and basins open upon the rivers, with tumbling creeks or graceful cascades pouring through them.
There are several concentric reefs separated by deep channels; the peninsula of Florida itself is a succession of such reefs, the everglades being the filled-up channels, while the hummocks were formerly little intervening islands, like the mangrove islands in the present channels.
And, sure enough, when we were barely fifty feet away from the shore, and there seemed nothing for it but to run dead aground, low down through the floating mangrove branches we caught sight of a narrow gleam starting inland, and in another moment or two our decks were swept with foliage as the Flamingo rustled in, like a bird to cover, through an opening in the bushes barely twice her beam; and there before us, snaking through the brush, was a lane of water which immediately began to broaden between palmetto-fringed banks, and was evidently deep enough for a much larger vessel.
When we boarded, the Wave had been left with only Peter Mangrove; the five dockyard negroes; Pearl, one of the Captain's gigs, the handsome black already introduced on the scene; poor little Reefpoint, who, as already stated, was badly hurt; Aaron Bang, Paul Gelid, and Wagtail.
O God, how should he find his brother? Some strange bird out of the woods made mournful answer "Never, never, never!" How should he face his mother? "Never, never, never!" walled the bird again; and Amyas smiled bitterly, and said "Never!" likewise. The night mist began to steam and wreath upon the foul beer-colored stream. The loathy floor of liquid mud lay bare beneath the mangrove forest.
Swarms of sheldrakes were perching in the trees, and, as we approached, they rose with a loud noise, flying up and down the lagoon, and circling in the air around us. A chain of water-holes, fringed with Mangrove myrtle, changed, farther to the westward, into a creek, which had no connection with the river, but was probably one of the heads of the Nassau.
The river is deep and muddy; the banks are covered with impenetrable thickets of mangrove; and the whole of the adjacent country appears to be flat and swampy. The Gambia abounds with fish, some species of which are excellent food; but none of them that I recollect are known in Europe.
The fellow who captured the head would receive the whole collection. As I say, they appeared very friendly; and on this day I was fully a hundred yards down the beach from the boat. Otoo had cautioned me; and, as usual when I did not heed him, I came to grief. The first I knew, a cloud of spears sailed out of the mangrove swamp at me. At least a dozen were sticking into me.
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