C. G. Schillings, phot.
MY PELICANS (TANTALUS IBIS, L.), WHICH AFTERWARDS TOOK UP THEIR ABODE IN THE BERLIN ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.
A SIESTA IN CAMP. THE MIDDAY HOUR.
Beyond the glow of the camp-fire our eyes cannot travel—we cannot see what is happening outside the camp, even quite close at hand. This intensifies one’s feeling of insecurity, for I know well how suddenly and with what lightning speed the great felines manage their attacks. It is in just such circumstances that so many men fall victims to lion and leopard. One evening a leopard will snatch a small dog from your feet, the next it will carry off one of the native women before the eyes of the whole population of your camp. You must have had such things happen to you, or hear of them from eye-witnesses, to realise the danger.
Near my tent stand two hoary old trees all hung with creepers. In the uncertain firelight they seem to be a-quiver with life, and they throw phantom-like shadows. I hear the soft footsteps of the watch—they recall me to actualities. Now the moon emerges, and suddenly sheds its brilliant radiance over the entire velt. It is like the withdrawing of a pall. My thoughts wander away upon the moonbeams, and travel on and on, over land and sea, like homing birds.... The reader who would steep himself in the beauty and strangeness of this African camp-life should turn to the pages of that splendid work Caput Nili, by my friend Richard Kandt. There he will find it all described by a master-hand in a series of exquisite nature-pictures. In language full of poetic beauty he gives us the very soul of the wilderness. These studies and sketches, from the pen of the man who discovered the sources of the Nile, are a veritable work of art. It is easier for the nature-lover to give himself up to the charms of this African solitude than to set them forth adequately in words.
C. G. Schillings, phot.
A STRANGE FRIENDSHIP SPRANG UP BETWEEN A SMALL APE AND A GOSHAWK THAT I HAD AT HOME AT AN EARLIER DATE. THE APE USED OFTEN TO PULL THE BIRD ABOUT PLAYFULLY, WHILE TWO STORKS LOOKED ON WITH INTEREST.