42 FROM THE NIGER TO THE NILE 



of tte Lake, and their familiar cries and flight todk one bac 

 to the shores and estuaries at home. 



Even at this distance of time and space, my though 

 often return to the mystic Lake, saiUng over her grey wate: 

 at sunset, past the endless dark reed headlands that couc 

 hke monsters guarding the brazen gates of the West ; < 

 wander along the shorehne where from their drinking tl 

 herd of hartebeest slowly tails back across the plain to tl 

 woods beyond, and the spur-winged geese rise from the 

 feeding in the green pasture at the water's edge. On tl 

 soft mud surface where the Lake has come and gone wil 

 the rise and fall of the wind, I see again the hosts of yello 

 wagtails running to and fro more hght and nimble than tl 

 froth blown by the harmattan. Beyond the point where tl 

 islands he across the river mouth, wreaths of white gul 

 circHng in the sky tell of the islanders at their fishing. Bi 

 soon with the sudden fall of the dark, the crested cano^ 

 steal out and glide Hke black swans in the twihght across tl 

 water -space to disappear, and the storks fly home to tl 

 woods and leave the lonely pelicans riding in their sleep upc 

 the wilderness of water. 



