382 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
mon on old camping grounds, and in native villages. The 
malarial mosquitoes also abound in places; and repeated 
attacks of malaria pave the way for black water fever, 
which is often fatal. 
The first day’s march from Kampalla led us through 
shambas, the fields of sweet potatoes and plantations of 
bananas being separated by hedges or by cane fences. Then 
for two or three days we passed over low hills and through 
swampy valleys, the whole landscape covered by a sea of 
elephant grass, the close-growing, coarse blades more than 
twice the height of a man on horseback. Here and there 
it was dotted with groves of strange trees; in these groves 
monkeys of various kinds—some black, some red-tailed, 
some auburn—chattered as they raced away among the 
branches; there were brilliant rollers and bee-eaters; little 
green and yellow parrots, and gray parrots with red tails; 
and many colored butterflies. Once or twice we saw the 
handsome, fierce, short-tailed eagle, the bateleur eagle, 
and scared one from a reedbuck fawn it had killed. Among 
the common birds there were black drongos, and musical 
bush shrikes; small black magpies with brown tails; white- 
headed kites and slate-colored sparrow-hawks; palm swifts, 
big hornbills; blue and mottled kingfishers, which never 
went near the water, and had their upper mandibles red 
and their under ones black; barbets, with swollen, saw¬ 
toothed bills, their plumage iridescent purple above and red 
below; bulbuls, also dark purple above and red below, which 
whistled and bubbled incessantly as they hopped among the 
thick bushes, behaving much like our own yellow-breasted 
chats; and a multitude of other birds, beautiful or fantastic. 
There were striped squirrels too, reminding us of the big 
