XXIII
The voyage has lasted three days.
At sunrise the whole world is bathed in a dazzling golden light.
And on this fourth day the rising sun reveals in the east a long line of green—which is at first likewise tinged with gold, changing to a shade so unnaturally vivid that one might compare it to the precise and delicate colouring on a Chinese fan.
This line is the coast of Guinea.
The troopship has arrived at the Diakhallémé outlet, and is approaching the wide entrance to the river.
The land there is as flat as Senegal, but its natural characteristics are different. With it begins a region where the leaves never fall.
The whole country is covered with wonderful verdure, a verdure already equatorial, a verdure that never dies—an emerald green whose vividness is never matched by that of our own trees, even in the radiant month of June.
Further than the eye can see there is nothing but this one interminable forest, of an unvarying flatness, mirrored in the warm, stagnant water, an unhealthy forest whose damp soil teems with reptiles.