464 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
As we went down the Nile we kept seeing more and more 
of the birds which I remembered^ one species after another 
appearing; familiar cow herons, crocodile plover, noisy 
spur-wing plover, black and white kingfishers, hoopoos, 
green bee-eaters, black and white chats, desert larks, and 
trumpeter bullfinches. 
At night we sat on deck and watched the stars and the 
dark, lonely river. The swimming crocodiles and plung¬ 
ing hippos made whirls and wakes of feeble light that 
glimmered for a moment against the black water. The 
unseen birds of the marsh and the night called to one an¬ 
other in strange voices. Often there were grass fires, 
burning, leaping lines of red, the lurid glare in the sky 
above them making even more sombre the surrounding 
gloom. 
As we steamed northward down the long stretch of the 
Nile which ends at Khartoum, the wind blew in our faces, 
day after day, hard and steadily. Narrow reedbeds bor¬ 
dered the shore; there were grass flats and groves of 
acacias and palms, and farther down reaches of sandy 
desert. The health of our companions who had been 
suffering from fever and dysentery gradually improved; 
but the case of champagne, which we had first opened at 
Gondokoro, was of real service, for two members of the 
party were at times so sick that their situation was critical. 
We reached Khartoum on the afternoon of March 14th, 
1910, and Kermit and I parted from our comrades of the 
trip with real regret; during the year we spent together 
there had not been a jar, and my respect and liking for 
them had grown steadily. Moreover, it was a sad parting 
from our faithful black followers, whom we knew we 
