Walter Goodfellow—Some Reminiscences of a Collector 457


you. Indian tribes too follow the game, moving from one locality

to another. Some have several villages, perhaps a week’s journey or

more apart, to which they change over.


The main Amazon is undoubtedly not interesting with its

monotonous and uniform level, and so wide as to suggest the sea.

The only pretty part is at the narrows above Para, where the ship

passes through a succession of narrow channels between some islands.

To see the real life of Amazonas one must go far from the main river

to its narrower affluents where the banks are nearer, or up creeks,

where the branches may even meet overhead, to see some of its animal

Hfe.


We have all heard from childhood that saying about “ Birds without

song, flowers without scent, etc. ” as applied to the tropics, but was

anything more inaccurate ever written ? I have heard more song

in the early morning in a jungle than I have ever heard in Europe.

For one thing both numbers and species are far more numerous there

than they are with us. Some say “ Yes, but what about the Blackbirds

and Thrushes ? ” Well, there are members of this family to be found

nearly all over the world, some of them no mean songsters either.

I often think of those daybreak hours in the far interior of Borneo

for one place, and I think how I used to enjoy the volume of song

and all the various musical calls of birds known and unknown to me

by their voices, as I lay in bed for that all too short time between

dawn and sunrise. I can well imagine, say a Dyak, taken away to

some other land, how homesick he would be for all this. Even I myself

on my way back there on subsequent visits have been looking forward

to hearing it all again ; and the pleasure certain songs and calls I had

forgotten gave me when I remembered them again. I often shut my

eyes and thought “ Have I ever been away from this Australia,

although not all in the tropics, has enough brilliantly-coloured birds

in all conscience, and yet some whose song can equal our best.


I grant the raucous notes of many of the inmates of the Bird House

at the Zoo sound a bit distracting there, but the same in their native

jungle are quite in keeping, and many toned down by distance perhaps

sound even agreeable. It always gives me the greatest pleasure to

hear the ringing notes of some of the Paradise Birds. It takes me



