VOYAGE UP WHITE NILE 
41 
who have not seem them would credit. Then in southern 
Spain* we have winter wildfowl in quantities that defy 
verbal description. A forceful idea I remember being con¬ 
veyed in two words by our trusted Spanish gamekeeper, 
Vasquez. That old friend we had sent to reconnoitre a 
ten-mile marsh, and the verdict he delivered that evening 
was “ Vi cuatro ” (= I saw four)—an example of that 
exaggeration of paradox to which the Spanish tongue 
lends itself. Well we knew that during his twenty-mile 
ride Vasquez must that day have seen nearer four millions 
than four units! Yet his two words—almost asphyxiating 
in their terseness—told us precisely what we wanted to 
know, and I won’t stop to explain. 
Such aggregations as these may best be visualised by 
means of comparison. Incomputable as are their numbers 
—whether on the White Nile, Guadalquivir, or elsewhere 
—they are nevertheless surpassed by those of the myriad 
rockfowl (. Alcidce) that for six short weeks each summer 
throng the “loomeries ” of Spitsbergen and its Arctic 
archipelago. I cite these expressly to call as witness one 
of our very best and most cautious of British ornithologists, 
the late Professor Alfred Newton. In one of those classic 
articles that characterised the earlier Ibis , Newton recorded 
the deliberate opinion that in Spitsbergen a spectacle of 
four million auks—all on wing and all in sight together 
—was no mere fanciful exaggeration (Ibis, 1865, p. 6). 
Such testimony corroborates the boldest of my own 
estimates and computations. It is, however, a far digres¬ 
sion from Tropic to Arctic. 
The lower White Nile, as just stated, is immensely 
broad and its stream intercepted by low islands and 
sand-banks divided one from another by shallows, oozes, 
and backwaters. At intervals these natural sanctuaries 
are so completely carpeted with water-fowl as to present 
an appearance of being, as it were, tessellated with living 
creatures, and that over a space of perhaps half a mile and 
sometimes more. These feathered armies are composed 
