CHAP. VIII COWARDLY CROCODILES 133 



schools of hippopotami — a small, dark -coloured variety — 

 which grunted at us as we passed. Flocks of wild fowl 

 browsed on the weeds and algae, fish-eating birds dived after 

 their prey, and every now and then the sharp crack of the 

 jaws of a crocodile would tell us that the tables were turned, 

 and that the birds were food as well as feeders. The crocodiles 

 occur in enormous numbers, especially among the bays that are 

 almost choked with vegetation ; there they lay like logs amid the 

 rushes, preying on the ducks that swarm on the pools. Bates ^ 

 tells us that in some of the upper waters of the Amazon the 

 alligators occur in huddled, jostling crowds, and are as thick 

 as tadpoles in an English ditch. Until I saw Baringo I thought 

 this wild exaggeration. In such places I never got all the birds 

 I shot, and to secure anything like a fair share of the bag I 

 had to plunge in at once. Fortunately the crocodiles are as 

 cowardly as voracious, and shouts and splashes readily drove 

 them away. One evening in the dusk I almost tumbled over 

 one that I had not noticed, and though it fled at once, if 

 possible more frightened than I was, I never waded for duck 

 again. After that I always sent in the men on the excuse 

 that the wet spoiled my boots and clothes ; if none of the 

 porters were with me I left the duck severely alone. In this 

 work Lomweri was absolutely useless ; his ingrained terror of 

 crocodiles was so abject that it would have been pitiable had it 

 not been so comic. He would stand on the margin of the 

 swamp wringing his hands in agony, and imploring us to come 

 back ; but when we brought in the birds he would dance with 

 glee, pat his stomach, and smack his lips, and when the ducks 

 were roasted, he would beat any of us in the pace at which he 

 ate them. 



The one disappointment of the return journey was the 

 failure to reach a small archipelago of islands in the southern 

 half of the lake ; I wanted at first to visit them to see the 

 Wakwafi who inhabit them, but the islands themselves 

 acquired an interest, when I learnt to recognise in them the 

 broken remnants of a volcanic cone. The natives, however, 

 held aloof, and I postponed building a raft till I could return 

 to the lake later on. Lomweri and I once surprised a couple 

 of the natives on the shore, but neither the guide's assurances 



1 H. W. Bates, A Naturalist on the Amazons, 5th ed. p. 299. 



