ANIMALS — GONDOKORO AS A PORT. 369 
sooner over by swimming, and when a cow was killed 
on the opposite bank, its meat was placed inside the 
inflated skin, and propelled through the water by the 
man swimming behind it. Crocodiles were no doubt 
numerous, but we saw no accident ; they must be 
frightened by the number of people who daily cross at 
this point. We heard from Petherick of crocodiles as 
high as a table, and twenty-five feet long. At night 
the stillness was often broken by the trumpets of the 
hippopotami, which sound softer and more musical than 
when heard during the day. Baker had an excellent 
fishing-net, with which, in a jolly-boat, his men would 
cross the river to still water, and in a couple of hours 
bring back half-a-dozen species. Some resembled her- 
ring in shape, but the best for eating was a large flat 
fish. Of birds, the most interesting was a scarlet and 
green fly-catcher, which nestles in the perpendicular 
banks of the Nile like a swallow. We had not met 
with it on the journey. It took short flights, rapidly 
skimming the air, and then resting for a moment on 
the brink of the bank. From the Nyam Nyam coun- 
try to the west very handsome black goats are brought, 
remarkable for their small size and long hair. It may 
be worth mentioning that we here saw leeches, which 
we had not met with in any previous part of our 
journey ; whereas, in the Himalayas, one cannot go 
through the grass returning from a day's sport with- 
out having a dozen of them fastened on one's legs. 
Gondokoro presented quite the appearance of a sea- 
port, there being twenty large boats anchored there. 
We had understood it to be an outlandish place — dan- 
gerous and almost inaccessible. But for the last five- 
and-twenty years or more it has been a mission-station 
2 A 
