EXPLORATION OF THE BAMINGI 197 



This owl {Scotopelia peli) was not common, but now and 

 again the noise of our approach startled one from its 

 dark retreat, and it would fly up the river to seek shelter 

 again in the trees ahead. 



We camped that night in a thick belt of trees, which the 

 long shadows of the late afternoon made look all the more 

 forbidding, but no other place could be found, so we had to 

 make the best of it. It was dark and damp, the trees dripped 

 moisture from every leaf and the fall of the drops pattering 

 on the dank weeds that covered the ground sounded as if the 

 forest were weeping under some horrid spell. When the 

 morning came we were glad to be up and away, and leaving 

 the melancholy grove behind, we emerged into the sunshine 

 of a perfect day. 



After proceeding some distance, we made a most annoying 

 discovery ; Jaggra, whom the reader doubtless will remember, 

 was nowhere to be found. Of course we gave him up for 

 lost ; he had been taken as toll for our lodging in the forest 

 of tears ! We suddenly realised a sense of great calamity, 

 and even the spirits of the " boys," ever stony-hearted where 

 animals are concerned, were subdued for a time. For 

 Jaggra was a great personality, a genius of a fowl, who had 

 climbed from the " cockpit " to be commander of the boat. 

 Truly he was a wonderful bird to have survived the fate 

 that he had been bred and born to ! Tied by the legs, he 

 had been shipped as poultry along with the thirty-one 

 others of his kind that had long ago gone the way of all good 

 fowls. One by one he had seen his fellows disappear (if 

 disappear be not too elegant a word for the dreadful process 

 of execution) and the day dawned when no neck stood between 



