52 WILD WINGS 



and a quarter in length, whose bite is like a knife-thrust, 

 with a corresponding flow of blood. No domestic animal but 

 the mule can support life in such a country, and that hardy 

 animal only by being kept in a screened stable and bundled 

 up in burlap when taken out to work. 



One Sunday I attended a religious service in a building 

 used as chapel and school-house. The women wheeled the 

 children there in baby-carriages, under each of which was 

 tied a smudge-pot. So the carriage rolled along, enveloped 

 in smoke and an outlying cloud of " skeets " and flies. In 

 the building smudges were going all the time, while the 

 congregation slapped " skeets" and the children chased 

 horse-flies. 



One of my best and hardest excursions was made one day 

 to a lake six miles away, or rather to its vicinity, for of the 

 lake I saw nothing. A tipcart drawn by a mule swathed 

 from head to foot in burlap, save for its eyes and projecting 

 ears, the most spectacular turnout it was ever my fortune 

 to see, took us half the distance. Then the guide and 

 I walked three miles over an open grassy marsh. In one spot, 

 by a mud-hole, he showed me the skeleton of a crocodile 

 which he had killed some weeks before. Already we could 

 tell the direction of the rookery from the bands of ibises of 

 both kinds which flew up from the marsh where they were 

 feeding and " lined " the way to the home-spot, bearing food 

 for their young, as also did herons and egrets. 



When we neared the edge of the lake, which was properly 

 a sort of everglade morass, and tried to get to the swampy 

 woods where the rookery was evidently located, our real trou- 

 bles began, compared with which " skeets " were as nothing. 

 Rivers of soft, treacle-like mud proved absolutely impassable. 

 Finally we got across a wide ditch and encountered a tract 

 of tall dry saw-grass, " snaky " and impenetrable. A match 



