166 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
heads as if demanding compensation for being turned out 
of their own property. 3 
Here, on this island, it seemed like the land of a 
visionary. A gorgeous sunset, with glowing masses of 
golden-red clouds irradiated the west, and repeated its 
glories with almost undiminished brilliancy in the vast 
sheet of tranquil water. On one side of us fantastically 
wooded, palm-crested islets floated in reflected gold, with 
every branch and frond of their tree-tops telling out 
against the shining sky. Long lines of weary birds flew 
low over the water, with faint cries of greeting to each 
other as they neared their shelter for the night. On the 
other side of the island, and so close as almost to over- 
shadow us, great masses of waterside forest rose into the 
sky, tinged with the warm yellow light of the opposite 
sunset, and filling with their long and clear reflections 
the strait of water that lay between them and our sandy 
shore. 
The grey parrots were in high spirits to-night, as they 
flew home across the river. They seemed to be telling 
each other “good things” as they passed over our heads 
in little bands, for their exulting screams and chuckling 
whistles were full of wild merriment. Whenever the 
grey parrot appears to be in a good temper flying home it 
is a sign, according to my observation, that the morrow is 
going to be a fine day, as also when = is out on his 
travels early in the morning. 
At length the glowing sunset died away, and I had, half 
reluctantly, to turn from this dreamland, where somehow 
thoughts of home seemed insensibly mingled with the 
clouds, the birds and the shimmering water, and attend to 
the necessities of the moment. Without my personal 
superintendence dinner would be an uncertain result, so 
the chest of provisions had to be unpacked and its 
contents distributed ; and whilst Mafta, the Zanzibari 
cook, my pupil in the culinary art, was killing a lean fowl, 
first reverently saying, “In the name of Allah” as he cut 
its throat, I sat on a camp-stool dealing out the preserved © 
vegetables, the lemon-juice, the flour, butter, rice, bananas, 
