DUCK SHOOTING 321 



from about an hour before sunset until night has 

 fallen, they come over, flying about 40 yards high 

 in small assemblies of from ten to thirty or forty ; 

 and on many occasions, so rapidly has flight 

 followed flight, I have wished that I had been 

 possessed of a pair of guns instead of my trusty 

 old double 12-bore only. The variety to which I 

 am referring is the small whistling duck commonly 

 called the " Tree " duck from the circumstance 

 that these birds readily alight upon the tree 

 growths by which nearly all African waters are so 

 consistently surrounded. On one occasion, while 

 I was the guest of one of the British gunboats 

 which some years ago cruised about the waters 

 of the lower Zambezi, the commander and I 

 kiUedbetween us over seventy of these birds during 

 one single hour of shooting. The number men- 

 tioned was that of those actually gathered, and 

 I fear that a considerable number in addition 

 were of necessity lost. 



It was a glorious evening in June, and H.M.S. 

 Herald was " tied up " for the night on the 

 southern bank of the Kongoni or Inyamissengo 

 branch of the Zambezi delta a few miles below the 

 point at which it receives the now well-known 

 Chinde channel. We descended into the small 

 dingy, put the arms and ammunition on board, 

 and were soon travelling rapidly down stream 

 propeUed by a muscular Sidi-boy. The river here 

 is very wide, and, being above the mangrove belt, 

 the banks were covered with luxuriant and strik- 

 ing vegetation. Here a graceful grove of waving 

 coconut palms marks the plantation of a half- 



