40 SAVAGE SUDAN 



wild Nature's creations. Thus to the tribe of true wild- 

 fowl, "scenery" is anathema repellent as the pavements 

 of Pall Mall to a Bedouin, or as sunlight to bat and owl. 

 For the study of some of these the "desert-stretch" of 

 White Nile affords an exhaustless field of research. 



Hardly has the voyager rounded Mogrem point 

 where, on the outskirts of Khartoum, Gordon's old 

 fort commanded the junction of Blue and White Niles 

 than he is confronted with panoramas of wild bird-life 

 worth a far journey to see, and which continue in increasing 

 variety for a couple of hundred miles beyond. No sense 

 of monotony in mere landscape need obtrude. 



Amidst such multitudes- apt at first sight to bewilder 

 it is natural that a British ornithologist should first 

 recognise his own familiar friends, even though (as is 

 patent enough) those friends constitute but a trifling 

 minority amidst hosts essentially Ethiopian. Thus, 

 among the first to catch our eyes on White Nile, we 

 counted six species of British ducks pintails by the 

 thousand, wigeon, shoveller, garganey, teal, and tufted 

 duck. It is always pleasant to meet old friends ; but 

 even more so when one feels a stranger amongst 

 strangers-, half-lost among totally new forms of life, some 

 weird almost to fantasy, others colossal, all novel and 

 unknown. With each and all by degrees a fuller acquaint- 

 ance is established, and possibly some of the author's rude 

 sketches may help to introduce the personality of these 

 strangers. To convey adequately an idea of their numbers 

 as seen in mid-winter is more difficult. Neither 

 cold numerals nor strings of selected superlatives would 

 serve ; save possibly to convey a suspicion of exaggera- 

 tion. It has been my good fortune to encounter, in various 

 waste spots of this world, similar aggregations and my 

 ill-fortune to have to describe them ! Thus even on our 

 British coasts there occur exceptional winters when 

 (the last Continental waters being closed by ice) there 

 resort hither massed multitudes of wildfowl such as none 



