382 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



mon on old camping grounds, and in native villages. The 

 malarial mosquitoes also abound in places; and repeated 

 attacks of malaria pave the way for black water fever, 

 which is often fatal. 



The first day's march from Kampalla led us through 

 shambas, the fields of sweet potatoes and plantations of 

 bananas being separated by hedges or by cane fences. Then 

 for two or three days we passed over low hills and through 

 swampy valleys, the whole landscape covered by a sea of 

 elephant grass, the close-growing, coarse blades more than 

 twice the height of a man on horseback. Here and there 

 it was dotted with groves of strange trees; in these groves 

 monkeys of various kinds some black, some red-tailed, 

 some auburn chattered as they raced away among the 

 branches; there were brilliant rollers and bee-eaters; little 

 green and yellow parrots, and gray parrots with red tails; 

 and many colored butterflies. Once or twice we saw the 

 handsome, fierce, short-tailed eagle, the bateleur eagle, 

 and scared one from a reedbuck fawn it had killed. Among 

 the common birds there were black drongos, and musical 

 bush shrikes; small black magpies with brown tails; white- 

 headed kites and slate-colored sparrow-hawks; palm swifts, 

 big hornbills; blue and mottled kingfishers, which never 

 went near the water, and had their upper mandibles red 

 and their under ones black; barbets, with swollen, saw- 

 toothed bills, their plumage iridescent purple above and red 

 below; bulbuls, also dark purple above and red below, which 

 whistled and bubbled incessantly as they hopped among the 

 thick bushes, behaving much like our own yellow-breasted 

 chats; and a multitude of other birds, beautiful or fantastic. 

 There were striped squirrels too, reminding us of the big 



