-* The Voices of the Wilderness 



twice each year traverse continents and tly safely over 

 seas. 



\Ve cannot help thinking of the lark and its spring 

 song at home, \vhen in the wilds of Africa we hear its 

 voice ; and it appeals so impressively to the wanderer in the 

 wilderness, that afterwards it has the power of bringing 

 back by its music a picture of the Xyika in all its 

 characteristic wildness. It is a song that has a character 

 ot its own. When I hear it, it it is in the Xyika, 

 I cannot help thinking of the songster's frail, weak 

 brethren of Europe, that, following an irresistible 

 impulse, are perhaps at this moment meeting their 

 death on the little island of Heligoland obedient to the 



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same instinct that sends myriads of their kind each year 

 towards pole or equator. For even as the northern 

 song of the lark awakens the soft, poetic spell ot 

 smiling fields, so, too, the mvsterious and still deeplv 



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veiled spell of the Xyika can find expression in its 

 wonderful music. 



Small, invisible almost, it rises in the air. Soon it is 

 lost to sight in the skv. Then suddenlv a song that, 



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though so often heard before, is still a marvel, comes 

 distinctly on the ear, its notes sharply accented and 

 emphasised as it it were close to us. There is a sharp, 

 rhythmical, clapping sound, as if small laths or pieces of 

 whalebone were being rattled together. It comes from 



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that tree right in front of us. Xo mistake about it seems 

 possible. But the eye searches in vain for the producer 

 ot the sound. 



Again and again one is deceived in this way. \\ ho 



305 so 



