TREKKING THROUGH THE THIRST 



189 



birds and small mammals while the rest of us pushed 

 wherever we wished after the big game. The tents were 

 pitched, and the ox wagons drawn up on the southern side 

 of the muddy river, by the edge of a wide plain, on which 

 we could see the game grazing as we walked around camp. 

 The alluvial flats bordering the river, and some of the 

 higher plains, were covered with 

 an open forest growth, the most 

 common tree looking exactly like 

 a giant sage-brush, thirty feet 

 high; and there were tall aloes 

 and cactus and flat-topped mi- 

 mosa. We found a wee hedge- 

 hog, with much white about it. 

 He would cuddle up in my hand 

 snuffing 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 curiosity in coming into 

 camp. They were nesting in burrows 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 cobra, less than eighteen inches long; 

 it had swallowed another snake almost as big as itself; un- 



A Colobus monkey 

 From a photograph by J. A Iden Loring 



