418 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
this point the Nile was miles wide, and was divided into 
curving channels which here and there spread into lake¬ 
like expanses of still water. Along the edges of the river 
and between the winding channels and lagoons grew vast 
water-fields of papyrus, their sheets and bands of dark 
green breaking the burnished silver of the sunlit waters. 
Beyond the further bank rose steep, sharply peaked hills. 
The tricolored fish eagles, striking to the eye because of 
their snow-white heads and breasts, screamed continually, 
a wild eerie sound. Cormorants and snake birds were 
perched on trees overhanging the water, and flew away, or 
plunged like stones into the stream, as I approached; her¬ 
ons of many kinds rose from the marshy edges of the bays 
and inlets; wattled and spur-winged plovers circled over¬ 
head; and I saw a party of hippopotami in a shallow on 
the other side of the nearest channel, their lazy bulks raised 
above water as they basked asleep in the sun. The semi¬ 
diurnal slate-and-yellow bats flitted from one scantily leaved 
tree to another, as I disturbed them. At the foot of a steep 
bluff, several yards from the water, a crocodile lay. I 
broke its neck with a soft-nosed bullet from the little Spring- 
field; for the plated skin of a crocodile offers no resistance 
to a modern rifle. We dragged the ugly man-eater up the 
bank, and sent one of the porters back to camp to bring out 
enough men to carry the brute in bodily. It was a female, 
containing thirty eggs. We did not find any crocodile’s 
nest; but near camp, in digging a hole for the disposal of 
refuse, we came on a clutch of a dozen eggs of the monitor 
lizard. They were in sandy loam, two feet and a half be¬ 
neath the surface, without the vestige of a burrow leading 
to them. When exposed to the sun, unlike the crocodile’s 
