HERDS OF GAME ON THE CHOBE. 321 



in certain sections of country, these animals fly before 

 the drought, and migrate to well-watered districts, or 

 collect upon the banks of large rivers whose sources 

 are perennial. The Chobe and the Zambesi in South 

 Africa, are instances in point: these, and other great 

 waters being visited, at certain seasons of the year, 

 by countless thousands of game animals, driven thither 

 by thirst from the waterless plains. The hippopotamus, 

 of course, being an aquatic animal, never quits the 

 immediate vicinity of water. The rhinoceros also 

 requires to drink daily, and never strays far into 

 waterless tracts. So also, according to Dr. Livingstone, 

 the zebra, the pallah, and the buffalo, are never found 

 any great distance from water; and the spoor of all 

 these animals, freshly made, may be accepted as certain 

 evidence that water is not far off. Again, the same 

 high authority remarks that when, amidst the solemn 

 stillness of the woods, the singing of joyous birds 

 falls upon the ear, it is certain that water is close at 

 hand. * Blessed therefore to the traveller's ear are 

 these musical sounds in a thirsty land. 



Similar evidence is afforded by watching the con- 

 verging flights of birds as they pass towards evening 

 in the direction of their drinking places. Mr. Gordon 

 Gumming, the great African hunter, for instance, saved 

 his expedition from a disastrous retreat by noting the 

 flight of birds. His cattle were perishing from thirst, 

 and treacherous guides were urging him to go back, 

 because the country in front, which they did not want 

 him to see, was, they asserted, a wide waste of water- 

 less desert, which no man had ever been through ; but 



* The Zambesi and Its Tributaries, and the Discovery of Lakes 

 Shirwa and Nyassa, by David and Charles Livingstone, 1865, pp. 207 8. 



VOL. I. 21 



