ABSTRACT
In this strange region of water and marsh-land the elements enter into the lives of the people with a nearness and intimacy unknown in Northern latitudes. Isong, the Earth Mother, holds her children very close to her breast. The cradling arms of the water lap the land on every side; while fire, which in our cold North mostly means the gentle glow of the hearth, or the terrible destroyer, annihilating in a few hours the hoarded treasures of centuries, somehow seems in Africa to mean so infinitely more. Whether girdling a desert camp with its ring of flame, and thereby acting as guardian against the fierce-eyed, keen-fanged denizens of the wild wastes beyond; or raging, reaper-like, amid the lush green of the Southern Nigerian bush, felling its luxuriant growth, thus clearing and preparing the land for the planting of new farms: for pure riot of colour, such a bush fire, seen as dusk is falling, could hardly be surpassed.
