100 
In the Heart of Africa 
mined until a careful comparison has been made. Having very 
carefully attended to the dressing of the skin, we celebrated the 
event by cracking a bottle of Moselle. It was Mildbraed’s first 
successful hunting exploit in Africa, but was followed by many 
others, by which our collection was enriched with many a fine 
specimen. 
Next morning we left Wau, the idyllic, in most beautiful 
weather, and sailed for the west coast of Kwidschwi. The 
departure was, of course, accompanied by the usual noise and 
bustle. We were obliged to distribute our reserve stores of pro¬ 
visions, which had been sent after us on a primitive dhow from 
Kissenji to Wau, amongst the eight dug-outs, and the rowers 
behaved as if they feared the additional loads would imperil 
their boats’ safety. In reality that only meant laziness, for there 
was positively no danger to be feared with the mirror-like smooth¬ 
ness of the lake and the proximity of the banks, which lay right 
alongside our course. A few thrusts in the ribs from the Askari 
settled matters much more expeditiously than our despairing 
attempts to convince the men by words, and thus we at length 
got into the boats. I sat lost in thought in a deck chair in the 
bows of my boat, turning the pages of Kandt’s “ Caput Nili,” 
and revelling in his descriptions, as well as in the reality—the 
charming isles, the rugged slopes of the western shore, and in 
many other things around me. The voyage was interrupted 
several times by a brief chase—of course, an unsuccessful one— 
after an otter. We had more luck with the great white herons. 
These are the most attractive figures among the scanty water- 
fowl of Lake Kiwu, and as they are not hunted by the natives, 
they are not so very timid. If you see one of these striking 
birds proudly strutting along the banks, you may safely count 
it as spoil. With this exception we saw few other water-fowl 
during our several trips on the lake; one or two seamews and 
cormorants, grey herons, fox-geese and ducks, but all of them 
singly. This is a striking phenomenon when compared with the 
profusion of birds on other African lakes. It accords entirely 
with the generally accepted fact of Lake Kiwu’s poverty in 
