The stink of it was in our
nostrils that second night we camped. The moon rose, and we saw it as if
through the fumes of a yellow smoke. Far behind us we heard a wolf howl,
and it was the last sound of life. With the dawn we went on. We passed
through broad, low morasses out of which rose the sulphurous fogs. In
many places the water we touched with our hands was hot; in other places
the forests we paddled through were so dense they were almost tropical.
And lifeless. Still, with the stillness of death for thousands and
perhaps tens of thousands of years. The food we ate seemed saturated with
the vileness of sulphur; it seeped into our water-bags; it turned us to
the color of saffron; it was terrible, frightening, inconceivable. And
still we went on by compass, and M'sieu showed no fear--even less,
gentlemen, than did I.
And then, on the third day--in the heart of this diseased and horrible
region--we made a discovery that drew a strange cry even from those
mysteriously silent lips of M'sieu.
It was the print of a naked human foot in a bar of mud.
How it came there, why it was there, and why if was a naked foot I
suppose were the first thoughts that leaped into our startled minds. What
man could live in these infernal regions? WAS it a man, or was it the
footprint of some primeval ape, a monstrous survival of the centuries?
The trail led through a steaming slough in which the mud and water were
tepid and which grew rank with yellow reeds and thick grasses--grasses
that were almost flesh-like, it seemed to me, as if swollen and about to
burst from some dreadful disease, Perhaps your scientists can tell why
sulphur has this effect on vegetation.
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