Sax MINGO: CITY 
A rainfall of six inches in two hours, 
however, aroused grave doubts for the 
safety of these inhabitants of the always 
semi-flooded swash, and we tried to believe 
that the storm had not reached their por- 
tion of the island. 
The following morning our voyage was 
resumed. With Peter at the bow or in the 
rigging, we threaded narrow channels and 
crossed broad flats, when tide and wind 
“THE BIRDS ADVANCED!) WITH STATELY 
permitted, and at the end of three days 
took to our small boat to continue our jour- 
ney in water too shallow for the schooner. 
Hours of rowing up endless, unmapped 
creeks, flowing through a depressing waste 
of marl and stubby mangroves, brought us 
at last so near the flamingos’ home that we 
beached the boat and with lowered voices 
proceeded on foot through the mud and 
over the sharp coral rock. 
The rookery lay just the other side of a 
“coppet”’ of bushes and low trees. I ap- 
proached it with an almost painful feeling 
of expectation. Was it possible that within 
a minute or two the vision of years would 
become a reality? Should I actually see 
a thousand or more red-feathered forms 
closely massed in one glowing bed of color, 
building their nests, incubating their eggs, 
or even feeding their young ? 
One whose first knowledge of the glories 
of flamingo life is, perhaps, suggested by this 
article probably cannot fully appreciate the 
abnormal mental condition of the natural- 
167 
ist whose instinctive desires have been 
sharpened by years of longing and en- 
deavor; neither without a true understand- 
ing of the situation could one measure the 
unfathomable depths of my disappoint- 
ment when, peering cautiously through the 
vegetation, | saw only the dreary swash 
stretching birdless before me. 
“You ‘ain’t see no birds, sir?” replied 
Peter to my inquiry for the rookery; and 
TREAD” 
his surprise at the absence of the “wastly 
numerous hostes’”’ which he had reported 
as occupying this place only a week before 
almost equaled my discouragement in the 
face of this overwhelming failure. 
Our fears were realized. The deluge of 
four days before had played havoc with the 
birds’ homes. Hundreds of nests were 
submerged or washed away, and eggs were 
stranded on mud bars, half buried in oozy 
marl, or still floating on the water. The 
birds had disappeared. 
It was useless to attempt further search 
in this quarter, and in view of the proba- 
bility that other colonies of flamingos, if 
such existed, had suffered a similar disaster, 
work for the present was abandoned, and 
we sailed for Nassau to meet additions to 
our party and to replenish our supplies. 
In the meantime Peter was despatched 
to the region visited in 1902, and great in- 
deed was our joy on returning, two weeks 
later, to learn that the flamingos were 
nesting at this place in unusually large 
