I shall try now to give some notion of all the different sights I would sometimes come upon in a single day. It would often happen that, as I was making my way down the Pangani in my light folding craft, or else was setting out for the velt which generally lay beyond its girdle of brushwood, showers of rain would have drawn herds of elephants down from the mountains.[1] Even when I did not actually come within sight of them, it was always an intense enjoyment to me to trace the immense footsteps of these nocturnal visitors. Perhaps the cunning animals would have already put several miles between my camp and their momentary stopping place. But their tracks afforded me always most interesting clues to their habits, all the more valuable by reason of the rare chances one has of observing them in daylight, when they almost always hide away in impenetrable thickets. What excitement there is in the stifled cry “Tembo!” In a moment your own eye perceives the unmistakable traces of the giant’s progress. The next thing to do is to examine into the tracks and ascertain as far as possible the number, age and sex of the animals. Then you follow them up, though generally, as I have said, in vain.
C. G. Schillings, phot.
CLATTER-BILLS SETTLING UPON THE BARE BRANCHES OF RIVERSIDE TREES.
C. G. Schillings, phot.
CLATTER-BILLS (ANASTOMUS LAMELLIGERUS, Tem.).
The hunter, however, who without real hope of overtaking the elephants themselves yet persists in following up their tracks just because they have so much to tell him, will be all the readier to turn aside presently, enticed in another direction by the scarcely less notable traces of a herd of buffaloes. Follow these now and you will soon discover that they too have found safety, having made their way into an impenetrable morass. To make sure of this you must perhaps clamber up a thorny old mimosa tree, all alive with ants—not a very comfortable method of getting a bird’s-eye view. Numbers of snow-white ox-peckers flying about over one particular point in the great wilderness of reeds and rushes betray the spot in which the buffaloes have taken refuge.
The great green expanse stretches out before you monotonously, and even in the bright sunlight you can see no other sign of the animal life of various kinds concealed beneath the sea of rushes waving gently in the breeze. Myriads of insects, especially mosquitoes and ixodides, attack the invaders; the animals are few that do not fight shy of these morasses. They are the province of the elephants, which here enjoy complete security; of the hippopotami, whose mighty voice often resounds over them by day as by night; of the buffaloes, which wallow in the mud and pools of water to escape from their enemies the gadflies; and finally of the waterbuck, which are also able to make their way through even the deeper regions of the swamp. Wart-hogs also—the African equivalent of our own wild boars—contrive to penetrate into these regions, so inhospitable to mankind. We shall find no other representatives, however, of the big game of Africa. It is only in Central Africa and in the west that certain species of antelope frequent the swamps. In the daytime the elephant and the buffalo are seldom actually to be seen in them, nor does one often catch sight of the hippopotami, though they are so numerous and their voices are to be heard. As we grope through the borders of the swamp, curlew (Glarcola fusca, L.) flying hither and thither all around us, we are startled ever and anon by a sudden rush of bush and reed buck plunging out from their resting-places and speeding away from us for their life. Even when quite small antelopes are thus started up by the sound of our advance, so violent is their flight that for the moment we imagine that we have to deal with some huge and perhaps dangerous beast.
In those spots where large pools, adorned with wonderful water-lilies, give a kind of symmetry to the wilderness, we come upon such a wealth of bird-life as enables us to form some notion of what this may have been in Europe long ago under similar conditions. The splendid great white heron (Herodias alba, L., and garzetta, L.) and great flocks of the active little cow-herons (Bubulcus ibis, L.) make their appearance in company with sacred ibises and form a splendid picture in the landscape. Some species of those birds with their snow-white feathers stand out picturesquely against the rich green vegetation of the swamp. When, startled by our approach, these birds take to flight, and the whole air is filled by them and by the curlews (Glareola fusca, L.) that have hovered over us, keeping up continually their soft call, when in every direction we see all the swarms of other birds—sea-swallows (Gelochelidon nilotica, Hasselg.), lapwings, plovers (Charadriidæ), Egyptian geese, herons, pelicans, crested cranes and storks—the effect upon our eyes and ears is almost overpowering.