542 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



grunting, bristly pigs crowd around him — how brown with the sun 

 he is! — or lie in rows about him enjoying comfortable rest. Around 

 the pools filled by the floods the lapwing flutters; over the broad 

 flats the hen-harrier wings its unsteady flight; the martins sweep in 

 and out of their nests burrowed in the steep banks; dainty water- 

 wagtails trip about on the shingle-roofs of the innumerable boat- 

 mills; ducks and cormorants rise in noisy alarm from the stream; 

 while kites and hooded crows fly in circles over its surface. Such is 

 a picture of this region. 



Soon, however, the landscape changes. The alluvial plain, 

 traversed by the river which made it, broadens out. Over the flats, 

 not yet protected by dikes, and submerged by every flood, the river 

 extends in numerous, for the most part nameless branches. A 

 luxuriant growth of wood clothes the banks and islands, and as the 

 fringe is too dense to allow any glimpse of the interior, this meadow- 

 wood bounds the view for mile after mile. Variable and yet 

 monotonous are the pictures which appear and disappear, as in a 

 dissolving view, while the ship follows the windings of the stream. 

 Willows and poplars — white, silvery, and black — elms and oaks, the 

 first predominating, the last often sparse in their occurrence, form 

 the material of these pictures. Above the dense fringe, which con- 

 sists almost wholly of willow, there rise older trees of the same 

 kind; beyond these in the woods, which often extend far inland, rise 

 the impressive crowns of lofty silver poplars and black poplars, and 

 the bald heads of old gnarled oaks. A single glance embraces all 

 phases of tree-life from the sprouting willow-shoot to the dying 

 giant — trees living, sprouting, growing, and exultant in the fulness 

 of their strength; trees withered at the top, victims of fire from the 

 heavens or from the earth and half reduced to tinder ; trees pros- 

 trate on the ground, crumbling and rotting. Between these we see 

 the gleams of flowing or standing water; above all is the great dome 

 of heaven. In the secret shades we hear the song of the nightingale 

 and the finches, the lyrics of the thrush, the shrill cry of falcon 

 or eagle, the laugh of the woodpecker, the raven's croak, and the 

 heron's shrill shriek. 



Here and there is a glade not yet overgrown, a gap in the wood- 



