SOURCE: McEwan, Cheryl. “Paradise or Pandemonium?” In Gender, Geography and Empire: Victorian Women Travellers in West Africa, pp. 65-90. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2000.

In the following essay, McEwan analyzes the response of British female travel writers to the West African landscape, arguing that while their descriptions of the physical environment were complex and varied, they generally saw the natural environment as ordered and not chaotic and resisted the urge to establish control over the land they depicted.

A wonderful stillness pervades these West African creeks. Except for the gentle ripple of the water among the mangroves, hardly a sound was to be heard, and the only sign of life was afforded by an occasional crane, which, startled by the sound of oars, reluctantly abandoned his fishing and flew heavily away.

(Colvile, 1893, 314)

[We] set out on our river journey, under a full moon, threading our way along one of the...