Chapter Eleven 
TANGANYIKA (I) 
HE great continent of Africa, with her wealth of bird-life, 
many tribes with different customs and dialects, and vast sun- 
baked landscape, is certainly a land that calls one back once one 
has been steeped in her sunshine and peculiar ways of life. If con- 
tinents were likened to animals, Africa would surely be the camel. 
She is tough and will stand a certain amount of human exploita- 
tion, but has a will of her own, and appears to wear a supercilious 
air as if mocking those who become too familiar or who think 
they have conquered her. 
I find myself forever wanting to explore new territories, for 
much as I have seen during many years I still feel that there is 
something more exciting over the hill. Perhaps it was this in- 
satiable desire for novelty and adventure in a strange land that 
led me to Tanganyika—that vast portion of Africa of which I was 
shamefully in complete ignorance. So in the winter of 1933-34 I 
set off to satisfy a burning curiosity, and of course to collect 
birds. 
With me came my friend, Captain Geoffrey Ferrand, whose 
only handicap in life was that he was six feet five and a half inches 
in height—half an inch taller than myself, and therefore had even 
more difficulty in passing through low doors and fitting into ships’ 
bunks. Our previous meeting in the Kenya Highlands had so 
stimulated his interest in birds that he begged to join me on this 
expedition, to spend what he regarded as an ideal holiday. 
I had set my heart on visiting the eastern Usambara Mountains 
in northeast Tanganyika, which lie between thirty and forty miles 
inland from the port of Tanga. They are clothed with evergreen 
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