"Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest.... The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded island; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once - somewhere - far away - in another existence."
- Joseph Conrad 1857-1924 / Russian-Born English Writer