A TWELFTH ON THE EQUATOR 



59 



August. Bee-eaters, of vivid greens and red, flashed 

 in the sunlight ; but a yet more briUiant hue was 

 disphayed by an azure kingfisher. There were quaint 

 hornbills, rollers and bubbling bush-cuckoos — the latter 

 not heard since leaving Mombasa — eagle-owls, buzzards 

 and hawks of many kinds. A conspicuous genus was 

 that of doves, thousands in numbers, and in every size 

 down to the tiny G^na capensis. Insects here became 

 a burden — moscjuitoes in particular. At our last camp, 



^^ 





COUCAL, OR BUSH-CUCKOO. 



Known as " Water-bottle bird" at Mombasa. 



by a pestilent swamp on the Molo, we were doubting 

 whether death itself might not be welcome when a 

 merciful squall blew up and dispersed them. 



Another march across a torrid plain where great red 

 ant-hills towered w^ in hundreds, tall and thin, looking 

 at a distance like factory chimneys, and amidst which 

 we discovered traces of the mysterious aard-vaark, 

 brought us back to the Molo. There yet remained a 

 mountain- spur to cross, and here troops of baboons, some 

 looking as big as human beings, watched and barked 

 from the crags above. (An "old-man" baboon, by the 



