224 
TRAVELS IN 
brown, with a forked tail, was fo bold that it fuffered itfelf to 
be knocked down with flicks. Juft the reverfe was the cafe 
with a beautiful fmall hawk nine inches long, of a chocolate 
brown, with a triangular black fpot on each of the back fea- 
thers ; exterior fide of the wing feathers marked with femicir- 
cular ferruginous fpots paffing into white at the edges ; tail 
barred with alternate black and cinereous-blue ftripes ; beak 
and nails of a livid color. A fpecies of crow in vaft numbers 
rs generally found to attend birds of prey. It is uncommonly 
bold and ravenous, and all its habits are vulturine : the beak is 
ftronger and more crooked than that of the raven, and the 
upper mandible is carinated. One fex has a white fhield down 
the back only ; the other both on the back and the breaft. It 
is either a variety of the raven, or an undefcribed fpecies. Of 
other kinds of birds, there feemed to be few that are not com- 
monly met with in moft parts of the colony. Thrulhes and 
turtle-doves were the moft numerous. The former are known 
in the colony under the general name of fprew. A defcription 
of the different thrufhes of Africa would alone nearly fill a vo- 
lume, though not more than thirty fpecies appear to have been 
noticed, of which the nkeiis, refleding every fhade of azure, 
green, and purple, is the moft elegant, and one of the heft fing- 
ers. The only curious and rare bird that I obtained in the 
KarFer country was the buceros Africanus^ the African horn- 
bill 
In one day's journey from the Beeka we came to the mouth 
of the Keilkamma, near which the river was about the width 
of the Thames at Woolwich, ftil!, and apparently of great 
depth 5 
