40 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
wild Nature’s creations. Thus to the tribe of true wild¬ 
fowl, “scenery” is anathema—repellent as the pavements 
of Pall Mall to a Bedouin, or as sunlight to bat and owl. 
For the study of some of these the “desert-stretch” of 
White Nile affords an exhaustless field of research. 
Hardly has the voyager rounded Mogrem point— 
where, on the outskirts of Khartoum, Gordon’s old 
fort commanded the junction of Blue and White Niles— 
than he is confronted with panoramas of wild bird-life 
worth a far journey to see, and which continue in increasing 
variety for a couple of hundred miles beyond. No sense 
of monotony in mere landscape need obtrude. 
Amidst such multitudes—apt at first sight to bewilder 
—it is natural that a British ornithologist should first 
recognise his own familiar friends, even though (as is 
patent enough) those friends constitute but a trifling 
minority amidst hosts essentially Ethiopian. Thus, 
among the first to catch our eyes on White Nile, we 
counted six species of British ducks — pintails by the 
thousand, wigeon, shoveller, garganey, teal, and tufted 
duck. It is always pleasant to meet old friends; but 
even more so when one feels a stranger amongst 
strangers, half-lost among totally new forms of life, some 
weird almost to fantasy, others colossal, all novel and 
unknown. With each and all by degrees a fuller acquaint¬ 
ance is established, and possibly some of the author’s rude 
sketches may help to introduce the personality of these 
strangers. To convey adequately an idea of their numbers 
—as seen in mid-winter—is more difficult. Neither 
cold numerals nor strings of selected superlatives would 
serve; save possibly to convey a suspicion of exaggera¬ 
tion. It has been my good fortune to encounter, in various 
waste spots of this world, similar aggregations—and my 
ill-fortune to have to describe them! Thus even on our 
British coasts there occur exceptional winters when — 
(the last Continental waters being closed by ice)—there 
resort hither massed multitudes of wildfowl such as none 
