e at Maquival has been finished."

"Ah," said the governor profoundly, staring into space, "the new bridge
of Maquival has been finished!"

CHAPTER LV

The equatorial wilds spread before the safari its wealth of extravagant
hues and forms, all its perfidies veiled for the allurement of mortals
who would trust nature in her richest manifestations. The sun shone on
a rain-drenched world; the earth steamed; and through a mist like that
which prefaced the second Biblical version of creation the splendor of
the jungle seemed to be taking shape for the first time, at the command
of a power for whom beauty was synonymous with peril.

Nevertheless, the safari men were singing.

Askaris led the way, Somalis in claret-colored fezzes and khaki
uniforms, bare legged, with bandoliers across their chests and rifles
over their shoulders. Their small, dark faces were sharp and fierce;
they marched with the swing of desert men; their glances expressed
their pride, their contempt for the humble, melodious horde that
followed after them.

Four negroes, naked to the waist, supported a machilla, a canopied
hammock of white duck that swung from a bamboo pole. They were Wasena,
specially trained for this fatiguing work, maintaining a smooth step
over the roughest ground. Lilla reclined in the hammock. Her face,
half concealed by the fringe of the awning, appeared opalescent in the
filtered sunlight. Her tapering figure had the grace of Persian queens
and Roman empresses floating along in their litters on ripples of dusky
muscles.

So this delicate, white product of modernity, this embodiment of
civilization's perceptions and all that it pays for them, was borne at
last into the primordial world on the shoulders of savages.

Behind her streamed a hundred porters balancing on their heads the
personal baggage, rolled tents, chop boxes, sacks of safari food. They
were men from Manica, Sofala, and Tete, some of pure strain, others
with Arab and Latin blood in their veins. Their bare torsoes were the
color of chocolate, of ebony, or even of saddle leather; but all their
foreheads bulged out in the same way, all their noses were short and
flat, all their chins receded. On their breasts and arms were charms
of crocodiles' teeth and leopards' claws, to keep them safe from
beasts, rheumatism, arrows, pneumonia, snake bite, and skin diseases.
In the distended lobes of their ears were stuffed cigarettes, horn
snuffboxes, or flowe