VOYAGE UP WHITE NILE 41 



who have not seem them would credit. Then in southern 

 Spain, we have winter wildfowl in quantities that defy 

 verbal description. A forceful idea I remember being" con- 

 veyed in two words by our trusted Spanish gamekeeper, 

 Vasquez. That old friend we had sent to reconnoitre a 

 ten-mile marsh, and the verdict he delivered that evening 

 was " Vi cuatro" (= I saw four) an example of that 

 exaggeration of paradox to which the Spanish tongue 

 lends itself. Well we knew that during his twenty-mile 

 ride Vasquez must that day have seen nearer four millions 

 than four units ! Yet his two words almost asphyxiating 

 in their terseness told us precisely what we wanted to 

 know, and I won't stop to explain. 



Such aggregations as these may best be visualised by 

 means of comparison. Incomputable as are their numbers 

 whether on the White Nile, Guadalquivir, or elsewhere 

 they are nevertheless surpassed by those of the myriad 

 rockfowl (Alcida] that for six short weeks each summer 

 throng the "loomeries" of Spitsbergen and its Arctic 

 archipelago. I cite these expressly to call as witness one 

 of our very best and most cautious of British ornithologists, 

 the late Professor Alfred Newton. In one of those classic 

 articles that characterised the earlier Ibis, Newton recorded 

 the deliberate opinion that in Spitsbergen a spectacle of 

 four million auks all on wing and all in sight together 

 was no mere fanciful exaggeration (Ibis, 1865, p. 6). 

 Such testimony corroborates the boldest of my own 

 estimates and computations. It is, however, a far digres- 

 sion from Tropic to Arctic. 



The lower White Nile, as just stated, is immensely 

 broad and its stream intercepted by low islands and 

 sand-banks divided one from another by shallows, oozes, 

 and backwaters. At intervals these natural sanctuaries 

 are so completely carpeted with water-fowl as to present 

 an appearance of being,-as it were, tessellated with living 

 creatures, and that over a space of perhaps half a mile and 

 sometimes more. These feathered armies are composed 



