158 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
busily with his funny little nose. We did not have the heart 
to turn the tame, friendly little fellow over to the natural¬ 
ists, and so we let him go. Birds abounded. One kind 
of cuckoo called like a whippoorwill in the early morning 
and late evening, and after nightfall. Among our friendly 
visitors were the pretty, rather strikingly colored little 
chats—Livingstone’s wheatear—which showed real curi¬ 
osity in coming into camp. They were nesting in bur¬ 
rows on the open plains round about. Mearns got a white 
egg and a nest at the end of a little burrow two feet long; 
wounded, the birds ran into holes or burrows. They sang 
attractively on the wing, often at night. The plover-like 
coursers, very pretty birds, continually circled round us 
with querulous clamor. Gorgeously colored, diminutive 
sunbirds, of many different kinds, were abundant; they 
had an especial fondness for the gaudy flowers of the tall 
mint which grew close to the river. We got a small co¬ 
bra, less than eighteen inches long; it had swallowed 
another snake almost as big as itself; unfortunately the 
head of the swallowed snake was digested, but the body 
looked like that of a young puff-adder. 
The day after reaching this camp I rode off for a hunt, 
accompanied by my two gun-bearers and with a dozen 
porters following, to handle whatever I killed. One of my 
original gun-bearers, Mahomet, though a good man in the 
field, had proved in other respects so unsatisfactory that he 
had been replaced by another, a Wakamba heathen named 
Gouvimali—I could never remember his name until, as a 
mnemonic aid, Kermit suggested that I think of Gouverneur 
Morris, the old Federalist statesman, whose life I had once 
studied. He was a capital man for the work. 
