C. G. Schillings, phot.
ZEBRAS AND GNUS.
Deep silence all around. If the traveller stands still and holds his breath, this silence seems to weigh down upon the soul with a weird force. At such moments it is as though some vague disaster threatened, or something wicked and dangerous were creeping around unseen.
Suddenly, a squealing and chattering. There is a scurry up and down the tree-trunks, and again there is a strange sound of spitting and growling. Just now there had come over us a feeling such as is expressed in Böcklin’s[43] masterly picture, directly inspired by nature, Schweigen des Waldes (the “Silence of the Forest”). We had almost expected each moment that legends set before us by the power of his genius would here become realities; we felt that here one might surprise nymphs and dryads. The spell is soon broken. The gnomes of the primeval forest, the tree-climbing hyraxes, have scared away the silence. Wonderful to say, these dwarfish hoofed animals, the nearest still surviving relatives of the rhinoceros, are here scrambling up and down on the trunks of the venerable trees.
From all sides, from every spot, every direction, there resound the same cries, and again there is silence all around us. Here, far in the depths of the primeval forest, the bird world seems to have no home. But hark! I hear a curious chirping, and I notice on a bare bough above me one of the most gloriously coloured of African birds, the banded trogon (Heterotrogon vittatum, Shell.), which, uttering a most peculiar sound, is carrying on its characteristic sport—flapping its beautiful wings.
Then loud-sounding trumpet-like notes break on the ear. We hear a rushing in the air, and big hornbills with their huge beaks come sailing, as I judge by their cries, through the air, and alight on the top of a giant juniper (Juniperus procera). They, too, fly away after awhile; their trumpeting, dies away in the distance, and again there is silence all around. Their voices and that of the brightly coloured helmet-bird give to the primeval forest of Africa a strange charm that is all its own.
But now there suddenly breaks forth a remarkable sound, rising and again falling as I listen, a strange music of a most peculiar kind. It is the chatter of the colobus monkeys, a sound that cannot be described in words. A party of these wonderful creatures seems to be in good humour, for their song comes to me in chorus unceasingly, and in rising strength. “Murúh-murúh-murúh-rrrrrrmúh rrrrrrmúh-murúh quoi-quo-quo-quo-rrrr,” it sounds, now swelling strongly out, now gently dying away. These, too, are doomed to death, who now are letting us hear their primitive song, that in our days may so easily be their death-song; for these monkeys are keenly hunted for the sake of their beautiful fur, and their song often betrays them to the hunter, eager for their spoils. Some poisoned darts, which I find here with points as sharp as needles, and which were once shot with a bad aim at the little monkeys, are evidence enough of this.
AN ALARUM-TURACO (CHIZAERHIS LEUCOGASTRA) IN ITS PLACE OF SAFETY AMONG THE ACACIA THORNS.
And again I hear the great wood ringing and echoing with the countless cries of birds. There was a time, too, when the call of millions of the now all but extinct passenger pigeon resounded in North America; so, too—and of this I have no doubt—the cooing of the ringdoves was heard repeated by thousands of birds in our beech and oak woods at home when the acorns and beech-nuts were in season.