Africa, which they had somehow visualized as an extension of Europe – an extension of terms, of references to a definitive past – had already asserted itself as something different: a forbidding darkness where the croaking ravens matched the dry exclamations of spiritless men, and rationed laughter fashioned from breath simply the chattering of baboons. Sometimes they captured someone – a solitary frightened man out hunting hares – and were amazed to see that he was human like themselves.