Quotation from: Heart of Darkness

Written by: Joseph Conrad


"No use telling you much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a
stamped-in network of paths spreading over the empty land, through the
long grass, through burnt grass, through thickets, down and up chilly
ravines, up and down stony hills ablaze with heat; and a solitude, a
solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared out a long
time ago. Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers armed with all kinds of
fearful weapons suddenly took to travelling on the road between Deal and
Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to carry heavy loads for
them, I fancy every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very
soon. Only here the dwellings were gone, too. Still I passed through
several abandoned villages. There's something pathetically childish in
the ruins of grass walls. Day after day, with the stamp and shuffle of
sixty pair of bare feet behind me, each pair under a 60-lb. load. Camp,
cook, sleep, strike camp, march. Now and then a carrier dead in harness,
at rest in the long grass near the path, with an empty water-gourd and
his long staff lying by his side. A great silence around and above.
Perhaps on some quiet night the tremor of far-off drums, sinking,
swelling, a tremor vast, faint; a sound weird, appealing, suggestive,
and wild--and perhaps with as profound a meaning as the sound of bells
in a Christian country. Once a white man in an unbuttoned uniform,
camping on the path with an armed escort of lank Zanzibaris, very
hospitable and festive--not to say drunk. Was looking after the upkeep
of the road, he declared. Can't say I saw any road or any upkeep, unless
the body of a middle-aged negro, with a bullet-hole in the forehead,
upon which I absolutely stumbled three miles farther on, may be
considered as a permanent improvement. I had a white companion, too,
not a bad chap, but rather too fleshy and with the exasperating habit
of fainting on the hot hillsides, miles away from the least bit of shade
and water. Annoying, you know, to hold your own coat like a parasol over
a man's head while he is coming to. I couldn't help asking him once what
he meant by coming there at all. 'To make money, of course. What do you
think?' he said, scornfully. Then he got fever, and had to be carried in
a hammock slung under a pole. As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end
of rows with the carriers. They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their
loads in the night--quite a mutiny. So, one evening, I made a speech in
English with gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of
eyes before me, and the next morning I started the hammock off in front
all right. An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in
a bush--man, hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. The heavy pole had
skinned his poor nose. He was very anxious for me to kill somebody,
but there wasn't the shadow of a carrier near. I remembered the old
doctor--'It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes
of individuals, on the spot.' I felt I was becoming scientifically
interesting. However, all that is to no purpose. On the fifteenth day
I came in sight of the big river again, and hobbled into the Central
Station. It was on a back water surrounded by scrub and forest, with
a pretty border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three others
enclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A neglected gap was all the gate
it had, and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the
flabby devil was running that show. White men with long staves in their
hands appeared languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up to
take a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere. One of them,
a stout, excitable chap with black moustaches, informed me with great
volubility and many digressions, as soon as I told him who I was, that
my steamer was at the bottom of the river. I was thunderstruck. What,
how, why? Oh, it was 'all right.' The 'manager himself' was there. All
quite correct. 'Everybody had behaved splendidly! splendidly!'--'you
must,' he said in agitation, 'go and see the general manager at once. He
is waiting!'

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