youth, or whether, having got thoroughly tired of making the
delicately beautiful antelopes, corallines, butterflies, and
orchids, she just said : “ Goodness ! I am quite worn out
with this finicking work. Here, just put these other viscera
into big bags— I can’t bother any more.”
Our hasty trip across to the bank of the island on the other
side being accomplished, we, in search of seclusion and in the
hope that out of sight would mean out of mind to hippos, shot
down a narrow channel between semi-island sandbanks, and
those sandbanks, if you please, are covered with specimens—
as fine a set of specimens as you could wish for— of the West
African crocodile. These interesting animals are also having
their siestas, lying sprawling in all directions on the sand,
with their mouths wide open. One immense old lady has a
family of lively young crocodiles running over her, evidently
playing like a lot of kittens. The heavy musky smell they
give off is most repulsive, but we do not rise up and make
a row about this, because we feel hopelessly in the wrong in
intruding into these family scenes uninvited, and so apologetically
pole ourselves along rapidly, not even singing. The
pace the canoe goes down that channel would be a
wonder to Henley Regatta. When out of ear-shot I ask
Pagan whether there are many gorillas, elephants, or bush-
cows round here. “ Plenty too much,” says h e ; and it occurs
to me that the corn-fields are growing golden green away in
England ; and soon there rises up in my mental vision a picture
that fascinated my youth in the Fliegende Blätter, representing
“ Friedrich Gerstaeker auf der Reise.” That gallant man
is depicted tramping on a serpent, new to M. Boulenger, while
lie attempts to club, with the butt end of his gun, a most
lively savage who, accompanied by a bison, is attacking him
in front. A terrific and obviously enthusiastic crocodile is
• grabbing the tail of the explorer’s coat, and the explorer says
■“ Hurrah! das gibt wieder einen prächtigen Artikel für Die
Allgemeine Zeitung.” I do not know where in the world
Gerstaeker was at the time, but I should fancy hereabouts.
My vigorous and lively conscience also reminds me that the
last words a most distinguished and valued scientific friend had
said to me before I left home was, “ Always take measurements,
Miss Kingsley, and always take them from the adult male.” I
know I have neglected opportunities of carrying this commission
out on both those banks, but I do not feel like going back.
Besides, the men would not like it, and I have mislaid my
yard measure.
The extent of water, dotted with sandbanks and islands in
all directions, here is great, and seems to be fringed uniformly
by low swampy land, beyond which, to the north, rounded
lumps of hills show blue. On one of the islands is a little
white house which I am told was once occupied by a black
trader for John Holt. It looks a desolate place for any man
to live in, and the way the crocodiles and hippo must have
come up on the garden ground in the evening time could not
have enhanced its charms to the average cautious man. My
men say, “ No man live for that place now.” The factory, I
believe, has been, for some trade reason, abandoned. Behind
it is a great clump of dark-coloured trees. The rest of the
island is now covered with hippo grass looking like a
beautifully kept lawn. We lie up for a short rest at another
island, also a weird spot in its way, for it is covered with a
grove of oply one kind of tree, which has a twisted, contorted,
gray-white trunk and dull, lifeless-looking, green, hard
foliage.
I learn that these good people, to make topographical
confusion worse confounded, call a river by one name when you
are going up it, and by another when you are coming down ;
just as if you called the Thames the London when you were
going up, and the Greenwich when you were coming down. The
banks all round this lake or broad, seem all light-coloured sand
and clay. We pass out of it into à channel. Current flowing
north. As we are entering the channel between banks of
grass-overgrown sand, a superb white crane is seen standing
on the sand edge to the left. Gray Shirt attempts to get a
shot at it, but it— alarmed at our unusual appearance—
raises itself up with one of those graceful preliminary
curtseys, and after one or two preliminary flaps spreads
its broad wings and sweeps away, with its long legs trailing
behind it like a thing on a Japanese screen. Gray Shirt does
not fire, but puts down his gun on the baggage again with its