The great barren wilderness, which then in the dry season could boast of no verdure save the evergreen Hunger-plant, so well suited to the arid velt; the romantic site of my camp; the beautiful moonlight night, darkened over from time to time by great masses of clouds, heralding the approach of rain; the dangers lurking all around: everything conspired to produce a wonderful effect upon the mind. The night had come upon us silently, mysteriously, jet-black. Before the moon rose, one’s fancy foreshadowed some sudden incursion into the death-like darkness, the bodeful silence. There was something weird and unnatural about the stillness—it suggested the calm before the storm. Faint rustlings and cracklings and voices inaudible by day now made themselves heard. The world of the little living things came by its own, and crackled and rustled among plants and branches and reeds and grass. Hark! Is that the sound of a cockchafer or a mouse, or is it the footstep of a foe?... Even within my tent there are evidences of life. Rats bestir themselves upon their daring enterprises, to meet their end, here and there, in my traps. Emin Pasha has told us how he experienced the same kind of thing. How dormice and beautiful Sterkulien made their home in his camp, gleefully climbing up and down the canvas of his tent during the night—doubtless gazing at the strange white man with their great, dark, wide-open eyes, as they did at me.... Save for these sounds there is complete stillness, broken only by the voice of the night-jar, mournful and monotonous, as it wings its eerie, noiseless flight in and out of the firelight and round and round the camp.
C. G. Schillings, phot.
VULTURES ON THE WING.
C. G. Schillings, phot.
VULTURES HOVERING OVER THE CARCASE OF A GNU WHICH HAD BEEN KILLED BY A LION.
C. G. Schillings, phot.
VULTURES MOVING AWAY FROM A CARCASE, STARTLED AT MY APPROACH. (WHEN FIGHTING OVER A CARCASE, THEY GIVE OUT A HISSING KIND Of SOUND.)