A TWELFTH ON THE EQUATOR 
59 
August. Bee-eaters, of vivid greens and red, flashed 
in the sunlight; but a yet more brilliant hue was 
displayed by an azure kingfisher. There were quaint 
hornbills, rollers and bubbling bush-cuckoos—the latter 
not heard since leaving Mombasa-—eagle-owls, buzzards 
and hawks of many kinds. A conspicuous genus was 
that of doves, thousands in numbers, and in every size 
down to the tiny CEna capensis. Insects here became 
a burden—mosquitoes in particular. At our last camp, 
COTJCAL, OR BUSH-CUCKOO. 
Known as “ Water-bottle bird” at Mombasa. 
by a pestilent swamp on the Molo, we were doubting 
whether death itself might not be welcome when a 
merciful squall blew up and dispersed them. 
Another march across a torrid plain where great red 
ant-hills towered up in hundreds, tall and thin, looking 
at a distance like factory chimneys, and amidst which 
we discovered traces of the mysterious aard-vaark, 
brought us back to the Molo. There yet remained a 
mountain-spur to cross, and here troops of baboons, some 
looking as big as human beings, watched and barked 
from the crags above. (An “ old-man ” baboon, by the 
