But if you want to see it at its best, plunge into the cool forest glades before the sun has attained his maximum (when even the butterflies rest) and watch the green and gold Euphædra dodging in and about the broad green leaves or tangled creepers. See him spread his glorious panoply where that fitful sunbeam has somehow managed to pierce the vault. A sight for the dear gods, I tell you—is the Euphædra sunning himself on a Niger forest path. Men and politics become as small fry. The right perspective asserts itself. You almost forget the beastly, clogging, mentally muddling helmet (how the Almighty has blessed the African by granting him a thick skull which he can carry on his neck, shaved—shaved, mind you (the bliss of it even in thought!),—and as clean as a billiard ball at that) as you watch the Euphædra, and absorb the countless other delights the forest contains, foremost amongst them silence, silence from humans at least. “These are the best days of my life. These are my golden days.”
The floods have fallen and a thousand dark forms are building up the muddy, slippery banks against the next invasion, with saplings rough hewn in the forest; the men chopping and adjusting these defences, the women carrying up earth from below in baskets. Beneath, the fishermen are making fast their canoes and spreading out their nets to dry—all kinds of nets, ordinary cast nets, nets resembling gigantic hoops, stiff nets encased in wood somewhat after the pattern of the coracle. The broad river fades away into the evening haze. For the swift wings of night are already felt, and the sun has just dropped behind the curtain of implacable forest.
One by one, in twos and threes, in struggling groups, the workers scramble up the slope on to the path—or what remains of it from the floods—which skirts the village. It grows dark. One is vaguely aware of many naked, shadowy, mostly silent figures on every side of one; wending their way along the path, or flitting in and out among the houses. Eyes flash out of the semi-obscurity which is replete with the heavy, dank odour of African humanity when African humanity has been busily at work. In the open doorways a multitude of little fires spring into life, and with them the smell of aromatic wood. The evening meal is in preparation, and presently tired and naked limbs will stretch themselves to the warmth with a sense of comfort. The lament of a child serves to remind you how seldom these Niger babies cry.