Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

YOU
CHAPTER X
Farthest, but Shut, In
JJZUEREAT the reader is glad,
for at last, after thirty -two
months^ delay on the road, he arrives at
Mushidts great capital.
think that this great negro London is a choice
corner of the continent. Not a bit of it. By way
of choosing a country Mushidi has blundered on
a bare brown stretch of soil, flanked by two ribs of
rocky hills, scarcely any timber for fuel and a scarcer
supply of water. The city of Tantalus this Babylon
should be called, for the water, as it were, is up
to your chin, yet you can never get at it
"Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink."
The real rivers of the land, Lualaba and Lufira, just
near enough on the map to make the teeth water, and
just far enough to defy you to drink a drop. '* Tan-
talising," we call it, but the "thinking black" metaphor
for this same idea is the wild phrase, *' the non-biteable
elbow"! "Your elbow is near to your mouth, but can
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