20 WILD LIFE UNDER THE EQUATOR. 
some had come from thirty or forty miles, or perhaps 
even more. They came and they came, and they con- 
tinued coming, even after the sun had set, and two flocks 
came when it was almost dark. These had probably 
come from far away and had miscalculated the time their 
flight would take; or perhaps they had been detained 
by some dainty fruit on the road. At any rate they 
came very late. I calculated that at least twenty thou- 
sand parrots had arrived on the Island, although there 
may have been one hundred thousand, for I do not claim 
to have counted them all. They came to spend the 
night on the Island of Nengue Ngozo, and I now ceased 
to wonder at the strange name the natives had given to 
the Island. 
These gray parrots are said to live to be a hundred 
years old and even more. Some years ago I myself knew 
a sea-captain in New York by the name of Brown, an 
old trader on the African coast, who had a parrot which 
be had kept for thirty years. I wish you could have 
heard him talk and sing songs. Captain Brown is dead, 
and I know not where his widow has gone, but perhaps 
the parrot is still living. I could not help thinking that 
some of these old parrots had come here every day, per- 
haps, for a hundred years. 
They perched by hundreds and perhaps thousands on 
the same trees, and the trees on which they perched 
showed their heads far above those of the other trees. 
- How beautifully their gray plumage and their red tails 
contrasted with the green leaves from the midst of which 
they appeared! Some of the old ones were almost white. 
When old their feathers seem to be covered with a white 
powder, and if you pass your hand over their plumage 
