188 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
itself throughout the Congo scenery. <A line of forest 
reflected in the still water, an old, gnarled, and. withered 
tree-trunk in the foreground, half in the ooze, half high 
and dry above, on the whitesand. Ifyou do not approach 
too near, you may see the crocodiles lymg under the 
boughs of the fallen tree, their mouths gaping open from 
sheer listlessness, “and their bodies motionless in the 
warm shallow water, or basking and baking in the open 
sunlight, the whole creature revelling in the pleasure 
of dolce far niente. Then above, about, and around them, 
a multitude of lovely forms, water-birds and waders 
standing fearlessly pluming themselves regardless of 
the crocodiles, with whom they must make a compact, 
a mutual alliance. The crocodiles agree not to eat the 
birds, and the birds keep a good look out to warn the 
crocodiles by loud cries when “their only enemy, man, is 
coming. I have observed this strange intimacy between 
these very dissimilar creatures on all African rivers. How 
the advent of man must have re-acted on the relations 
between many of the higher forms of vertebrate life, 
compelling them almost to subordinate their own pre- - 
existing fears, quarrels and rapacities to the common dread 
of the universal enemy! Whom could the crocodiles have 
feared before this abnormal ape took to slaying instead of 
being slain? From the day that the first Protanthropos 
flung a stone at, or jabbed a sharp reed into a crocodile’s 
eye, this strange intimacy for mutual defence must have 
sprung up between the crocodile and the shore-frequenting 
birds. So, on the withered tree-trunk, and on the many 
twisted snages that rise above the water, perch the egrets, 
the bitterns, the herons, and the darters. Fat pelicans 
lounge on the oozy margin of the river’s wavelets, spur- 
winged and Egyptian geese stand in little groups on the 
sand, and Zikzak plovers, with yellow wattle and spurs 
to. their wings, hop on the crocodiles’ bodies, and, if they 
do not, as some suppose, pick the teeth, they at any rate 
linger strangely, and, as one would think, rashly, round 
the jaws of the grim saurians. 
Ah! Faraji, you have broken the spell! Startled by a 
sudden inroad of black ants over his unprotected skin, he | 
