HIS EXCELLENCY THE PRESIDENT 147

I didn't believe there was rice enough in the place to
feed my men.

Below the hill a wide river lay flat and heavy in the
evening light. It was the Loffa, which flows down
into the sea about thirty miles above Monrovia. None
of these Liberian rivers have been traced from their
source in the French Guinea hills to the sea; their
upper course is represented in the British War Office
map with dotted and inaccurate lines. They usually
fall in rapids about fifty miles from the coast and
so commercially are of little value, but even in these
calm upper reaches they are not used at all by the
natives of the Republic: the only canoes one sees are
ferries, and these almost all on the French border.
One would expect villages to duster round these
rivers, but actually they flow through the wildest and
least inhabited part of the bush until within a few
days' trek of the coast. The way over the Loffa that
evening was by a great hammock bridge. It was a
really lovely architectural sight, seventy yards of
knotted creeper swinging down from an" arboreal
platform fifteen feet in the air and out and up ten
yards above the Loffa to another tree on the opposite
bank. The foothold was about a foot wide, but it was
railed on either side with creepers to the height of a
man's shoulders. Sometimes the creepers had given
way, and one had to stretch across the gaps while the
whole bridge swung like a rope ladder.

Half-way across Mark was standing with a chicken
in his hand. He was sick and tired and hungry. He
could hardly stir another yard. But Amah, who had
been carrying a load all day since they left more than
twelve hours before, was quite fresh. He was waiting^