"That is right, Millie; you will be more interested the more definitely you fix the knowledge. How well I remember that day. It seems as though it had been but yesterday. Among all the rivers of the world, there is not one which can be compared with the Nile. It does not seem like any other water. There's a sort of magic about it. All the time that I spent there I felt myself living in dreamland rather than in anything that belonged to this life and this world. It is not the river itself, for I have seen a number of much finer and grander streams of water in other countries. The Danube or the Ganges can either of them surpass it, while here in America I could select half a dozen which are more than its rivals. But any one of them I always felt that I could understand. They were beautiful, they were grand, with charming banks and forests and fields and cities, but there was nothing strange about them. They seemed like other parts of the world. But the Nile is not like them; it never looked to me like a reality. Everything about it was so mixed with mystery that if I had waked any morning and found that there was no Nile to be seen where I saw it the night before, I should have thought it was all right.
"All around me were monuments and temples and houses so old that those who built them had died and been forgotten hundreds and perhaps thousands of years before the earliest history of which we have any knowledge commenced. Who were those people? I could tell how they looked, for there were their figures and faces carved on the stones, but—who were they? Where did they come from? Negroes, Asiatics, Egyptians, such as were about me every day; there they were carved, and sometimes painted, on the ruins, and I used to wander around and wonder, and dream, and wonder, and it was in the midst of just such wondering as that that a little kingfisher flashed upon me, and it is not strange that I remember him. Do you see the First Cataract, Millie, on the river?"
"Yes, here it is. P-h-i-l-a-e, Philæ; is that it?"
"That is the name of an island there with some extremely beautiful ruins upon it. Few travellers ascend the river further; they stop there and return; but I did not; I continued on to the south a long distance. One day, just before I reached the Second Cataract, I had stopped on the west bank of the river to rest my men for an hour or two. It was a burning hot afternoon, perfectly calm, with the sun blazing down on the white sand of the desert and on the glass-like water of the river, until it was enough to almost fry one's brain. Three or four palm-trees grew at this point, and it was their shade which had induced me to stop; but I found to my great delight that what was probably a temple had formerly stood there, and some of the fragments still remained. One of these fragments represented a human figure seated. The head was gone, and one arm; the other arm was perfect, with the hand lying on the knee, and I began to make a drawing of the whole.
"Just as in my drawing I reached the hand, and was sketching its shape on the paper, a little blue and red bird passed me, with a cry somewhat like the one you may hear any morning from our American species, and swinging up he perched himself on the very hand which I was drawing at the moment. It was a lovely little kingfisher. He sat there but a moment, and then darted to a hole in the river-bank, which he entered, and which I knew must contain his nest. It was such a burrow as our American species makes, and forthwith came back to my mind the time when I was a boy, and when Tom and Charlie and the rest of us worked so hard at digging toward Deacon Moseley's lot.
"I watched till the little fellow came out. Then he flew away, and I soon lost sight of him. His name is Corythornis cyanostigma, and the sight of another here in your hat carried me away so completely that for the moment I almost fancied I was on the Nile again, the association was so powerful."
"Well, papa, I am very glad of it. I will wear him only a day or two, and then I will take him out and give him to you, and get mamma to put something else in his place. You may be sure I shall never forget my Nile-bird hat. But did you not say that there are kingfishers found in other countries? I suppose they must be like this, even if they are not so beautiful."
"Yes, there are; and I must tell you of one most remarkable species, Millie—remarkable for his voice, though not for any beauty of color. We will call him Dacelo gigas—gigas meaning very large, for he is a great clumsy bird. He lives in Australia. The first night I ever spent there 'in the bush'—which means out in the wild country—I was waked just before daylight by a most outrageous racket in the thicket close to me. I started up in some fright, and roused a man near me. 'Oh, go to sleep; that is nothing but a jackass.' But as we were where a donkey would not be likely to come, I could not tell what to make of it, and I did not go to sleep, and by-and-by I heard him again and again, but my comrades paid no attention to the sound, and so I said nothing further.
"After breakfast I took my gun, and started out to look for birds. Among others I shot a great coarse-looking kingfisher, larger than a crow; and when I returned to camp, the man whom I had roused in the morning remarked, as I laid out my game: 'There, you have got him. That is the very fellow that you heard this morning. We always call him the laughing jackass.' And often after that I heard their harsh cry, like laughing and braying together."