196 FROM THE NIGER TO THE NILE 



ravines the growth became luxuriant with fine trees. It 

 was a naturalist's paradise, and I enjoyed exploring its 

 little passes and dells, which were glad with the sight and 

 sound of water trickling lazily over rocks and rich earth 

 clothed with ferns and mosses to join the river below. 

 Here, under the thickets and bowers of green was the 

 haunt of the shy red thrush, the sweet singer that de- 

 lights to hide in loveliness. I waited long and patiently 

 to catch sight of him, and at length I saw him drop down 

 stealthily from his green hiding-place to seek his food upon 

 the ground. At sundown when the depths of the ravines 

 became more profound and all the other birds had gone to 

 roost, the silent passes echoed with his ode to solitude. 



Our progress the next clay w^as much slower, and we made 

 barely 1;^ miles an hour. It was hard work poling against 

 the current which was daily gathering strength from the 

 rains, and we were obliged to take down the masts in order 

 to avoid the overhanging branches of the trees. The hours 

 matched their pace with ours, passing with such slow, deli- 

 berate tread that all the little incidents and sights of the day 

 were marked so deep in the mind that they still seem as if 

 they had happened but yesterday. Again I am watching the 

 struggles of the " boys " to stem the swift current that 

 swirls round a reef, or turning the bend where the bank rises 

 130 ft., and graceful trees soften the cleft sides of the harsh 

 rock. There, where the land stoops to the river, I see broken 

 branches that mark the passage by which elephants have 

 come to drink, and the glad moment returns to me when I 

 shot a gigantic tawny owl w^hich flew out over the boat from 

 the depths of a thick tree. 



