538 
African Game Trails 
shot the latter if it could have been avoided; 
but under the circumstances I do not see 
how it was possible to help it. The meat was 
not wasted; on the contrary it was a god¬ 
send, not only to our own porters, but to the 
natives round about, many of whom were on 
short commons on account of the drought. 
Bringing over the launch we worked un¬ 
til after dark to get the bull out of the diffi¬ 
cult position in which he lay. It was 
nearly seven o’clock before we had him 
fixed for towing on one quarter, the row¬ 
boat towing on the other, by which time two 
hippos were snorting and blowing within a 
few yards of us, their curiosity much excited 
as to what was going on. The night was 
overcast; there were drenching rain squalls, 
and a rather heavy sea was running, and I 
did not get back to camp until after three. 
Next day the launch fetched in the rest of 
the hippo meat. 
From this camp we went into Naivasha, 
on the line of the railway. In many places 
the road was beautiful, leading among the 
huge yellow trunks of giant thorn trees, 
the ground rising sheer on our left as we 
cantered along the edge of the lake. We 
passed impalla, tommies, zebra, and wart- 
hog; and in one place saw three waterbuck 
cows feeding just outside the papyrus at 
high noon. They belonged to a herd that 
lived in the papyrus and fed on the grassy 
flats outside; and their feeding in the open 
exactly at noon was another proof of the 
fact that the custom of feeding in the early 
morning and late evening is with most 
game entirely artificial and the result of 
fear of man. Birds abounded. Parties of 
the dark-colored ant-eating wheatear sang 
sweetly from trees and bushes, and even 
from the roofs of the settlers’ houses. The 
tri-colored starlings—black, white, and 
chestnut—sang in the air, as well as when 
perched on twigs. Stopping at the govern¬ 
ment farm (which is most interesting; the 
results obtained in improving the native 
sheep, goats, and cattle by the use of im¬ 
ported thoroughbred bulls and rams have 
been astonishingly successful) we saw the 
little long-tailed, red-billed, black and white 
whydahs flitting around the out-buildings 
as familiarly as sparrows. Water birds of 
all kinds thronged the meadows bordering 
the papyrus, and swam and waded among 
the water-lilies; sacred ibis, herons, beauti¬ 
ful white spoonbills, darters, cormorants, 
Egyptian geese, ducks, coots, and water 
hens. I got up within rifle range of a flock 
of the queer ibis stork, black and white 
birds with curved yellow bills, naked red 
faces, and wonderful purple tints on the 
edges and the insides of the wings; with the 
little Springfield I shot one on the ground 
and another on the wing, after the flock had 
risen. 
That night Kermit and Dr. Mearns went 
out with lanterns and shot-guns, and each 
killed one of the springhaas, the jump¬ 
ing hares, which abounded in the neigh¬ 
borhood. These big, burrowing animals, 
which progress by jumping like kangaroos, 
are strictly nocturnal, and their eyes shine 
in the glare of the lanterns. 
Next day I took the Fox gun, which had 
already on ducks, guinea-fowl, and fran- 
colin, shown itself an exceptionally hard¬ 
hitting and close-shooting weapon, and col¬ 
lected various water birds for the natural¬ 
ists; among others, a couple of Egyptian 
geese. I also shot a white pelican with the 
Springfield rifle; there was a beautiful rosy 
flush on the breast. 
Here we again got news of the outside 
world. While on safari the only news¬ 
paper which any of us ever saw was the 
Owego Times, which Loring, in a fine spirit 
of neighborhood loyalty, always had sent to 
him in his mail. To the Doctor, by the 
way, I had become knit in a bond of close 
intellectual sympathy ever since a chance 
allusion to “William Henry’s Letters to His 
Grandmother” had disclosed the fact that 
each of us, ever since the days of his youth, 
had preserved the bound volumes of “Our 
Young Folks,” and moreover firmly be¬ 
lieved that there never had been its equal as 
a magazine, whether for old or young; even 
though the Plancus of our golden consul¬ 
ship was the not wholly happy Andrew 
Johnson. 
