26 
BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 
you have a spit of yellow sand which separates the unruffled mirror of this calm 
water from the boisterous waves of the open lake. These are greenish blue 
with brown marblings and muddy white crests where they are receiving the 
alluvium of the river ; and fierce indigo streaked with blazing white foam where 
the lake is open, deep and wind-swept. On your left hand the estuary of this 
river (where the water is a speckless 
mirror of the blue sky and its 
cream-white grey-shadowed clouds) 
is studded with many green islets of 
papyrus and girt with hedges of tall 
reeds — the reeds with the white 
plumes and pointed dagger leaves 
that 1 have once or twice before 
described. 
This conjunction of mountain, river, 
marsh, estuary, sandspit, open lake 
and papyrus tangle brings about such 
a congeries of bird life that I have 
thought it worth the trouble to bring 
you all the way to Tanganyika to 
gaze at this huge aviary. And al¬ 
though on many of these journeys 
you are supposed to be looking on the scene with the eye of the spirit 
and not of the flesh, and therefore able to see Nature undisturbed by the 
presence of man, still on this spot you might stand in actuality, as I have 
stood, and, provided you did not fire a gun, see this collection of birds as 
though they were enclosed in some vast Zoological Gardens. For some 
cause or other has brought the fish down from the upper reaches of the 
stream or up from the lake. The wiater of the estuary is of unruffled 
smoothness. Most waterbirds detest the rough waves of the open lake, or 
the current of a rapid stream ; even now if you turn your eyes lakewards 
the only birds you will see are small grey gulls with black barred faces and 
black tipped wings and the large scissor-billed terns (grey and white with 
crimson beaks) flying with seeming aimlessness over the troubled waters. 
But in the estuary, what an assemblage! There are pelicans of grey, white 
and salmon pink, with yellow pouches, riding the water like swans, replete 
with fish and idly floating. Egyptian geese (fawn-coloured, white, and green- 
bronze) ; spur winged geese (bronze-green, white shouldered, white flecked, and 
red cheeked); African teal (coloured much like the English teal); a small jet 
black pochard with a black crest and yellow eyes ; whistling tree duck (which 
are black and white, zebra-barred, and chestnut); other tree ducks (chestnut and 
white); that huge Sarcidiornis (a monstrous duck with a knobbed beak, a 
spurred wing, and a beautiful plumage of white and bronzed-blue with a green- 
blue speculum in the secondaries of the wing). All these ducks and geese 
hang about the fringe of the reeds and the papyrus. The ducks are diving 
for fish, but the geese are more inclined to browse off the water-weed. Every 
now and then there is a disturbance, and the reflexions of the water are broken 
by a thousand ripples as the ducks scutter over the surface or the geese rise 
with much clamour for a circling flight. Farthest away of all the birds (for 
they are always shy) is a long file of rosy flamingoes sifting the water 
for small fish and molluscs. They are so far off that their movements are 
ON TANGANYIKA 
