Publisher's Synopsis
Aboard the Nellie, anchored withinside the River Thames close to Gravesend, Charles Marlow tells his fellow sailors how he have become captain of a river steamboat for an ivory trading company. As a child, Marlow have been interested with the aid of using "the clean spaces" on maps, in particular with the aid of using the biggest, which by the point he had grown up become not clean however grew to become into "an area of darkness". Yet there remained a huge river, "comparable to an enormous snake uncoiled, with its head withinside the sea, its frame at relaxation curving afar over a sizeable united states and its tail misplaced withinside the depths of the land". The photograph of this river at the map interested Marlow "as a snake might a bird". Feeling as though "in place of going to the centre of a continent I have been approximately to spark off for the centre of the earth", Marlow takes passage on a French steamer certain for the African coast after which into the interior. After extra than thirty days the deliver anchors off the seat of presidency close to the mouth of the huge river. Marlow, with 200 mi (320 km) to move yet, takes passage on a bit sea-going steamer captained with the aid of using a Swede. He departs a few 30 mi (50 km) up the river in which his company's station is. Work at the railway goes on, related to elimination of rocks with explosives. Marlow enters a slim ravine to walk withinside the colour beneathneath the trees, and unearths himself in "the gloomy circle of a few Inferno": the area is complete of diseased Africans who labored at the railroad and now lie ill and gaunt, watching for death. Marlow witnesses the scene "horror-struck".
