282 A SPORTING TRIP THROUTH ABYSSINIA chap. 



the depths. They gradually came in nearer, and I had 

 great hopes of getting a shot, but something or other 

 alarmed them, and they returned to deeper water. When 

 it was getting dusk, they began to come ashore again, 

 but although I crawled out on some rocks, it was too 

 dark, and I had to return to camp without getting a 

 shot. 



While thus engaged I had repeatedly noticed a pair of 

 curious-looking birds flitting along the shore : it seemed 

 for all the world as if each had a couple of attendant 

 butterflies always fluttering just a little above it. At last, 

 when I was lying motionless, half in, half out of, a puddle 

 on the rocks, one of them came and hovered about close 

 to me, and I then got the solution of the puzzle : the 

 butterflies were two streamers which ended in a feathery 

 tuft, the fine connecting-wire quills being quite invisible 

 at a little distance in the dim light. The bird, I have 

 since ascertained, was the pennant -winged night-jar 

 [Macrodipterx longipennis). 



Next morning we started along the western shore 

 of the lake, accompanied by some twenty armed men 

 from the neighbourhood as escort. On the rocky ridge 

 to the north of the third bay from Wundee we passed 

 the ruined stone houses of Duncfulbar, once a flourishinsf 

 place and still the boundary between Gojam and Gondar 

 territory. In the bay just beyond were some fine trees, 

 among which 1 saw some reedbuck, and managed to 

 bag one of them. Camp was pitched on the next bay 

 to this, called Balesse, and here quite a number of people 

 collected, to take advantage of our escort in journeying 

 to the north of the lake, as the outlaws regularly rob 



