158 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



busily with his funny little nose. We did not have the heart 

 to turn the tame, friendly little fellow over to the natural- 

 ists, and so we let him go. Birds abounded. One kind 

 of cuckoo called like a whippoorwill in the early morning 

 and late evening, and after nightfall. Among our friendly 

 visitors were the pretty, rather strikingly colored little 

 chats Livingstone's wheatear which showed real curi- 

 osity in coming into camp. They were nesting in bur- 

 rows on the open plains round about. Mearns got a white 

 egg and a nest at the end of a little burrow two feet long; 

 wounded, the birds ran into holes or burrows. They sang 

 attractively on the wing, often at night. The plover-like 

 coursers, very pretty birds, continually circled round us 

 with querulous clamor. Gorgeously colored, diminutive 

 sunbirds, of many different kinds, were abundant; they 

 had an especial fondness for the gaudy flowers of the tall 

 mint which grew close to the river. We got a small co- 

 bra, less than eighteen inches long; it had swallowed 

 another snake almost as big as itself; unfortunately the 

 head of the swallowed snake was digested, but the body 

 looked like that of a young puff-adder. 



The day after reaching this camp I rode off for a hunt, 

 accompanied by my two gun-bearers and with a dozen 

 porters following, to handle whatever I killed. One of my 

 original gun-bearers, Mahomet, though a good man in the 

 field, had proved in other respects so unsatisfactory that he 

 had been replaced by another, a Wakamba heathen named 

 Gouvimali I could never remember his name until, as a 

 mnemonic aid, Kermit suggested that I think of Gouverneur 

 Morris, the old Federalist statesman, whose life I had once 

 studied. He was a capital man for the work. 



