I kept as still as a mouse, knowing well that the slightest movement would betray my presence to the timid, keen-sighted monkeys.
Now a numerous herd of zebras moved through the wood and across the clearing at a slow, careless pace. As they moved there was a bright shimmering of the variegated stripes of the beautiful “tiger-horses,” and again they would often be blurred into one uniform grey. They mingled with the waterbuck, which took very little notice of them, and evidently had known the zebras for a long time. It was wonderful to see the proud waterbuck, with their horns, which are at once weapon and ornament, and the stallion leaders of the zebra herd all continually on the alert watching against their enemies.
TELEPHOTO STUDIES OF VARIOUS ATTITUDES AND MOVEMENTS OF GRANT’S GAZELLES.]
There is a scuttling over the ground, for the little mongoose family, that live over there among the ant-hills, are making a sally from their fortress. Snake-like in their swift movements, the graceful little animals seem to glide along. Yonder two snake-vultures are looking for reptiles. Numbers of other vultures and marabous have flown down to the margin of the shallow water to bathe and drink.
Into the midst of all this gathering of animals there now come three ostriches, making for the fresh green growth along the marshy edge of the river-bank, and a number of francolins and guinea-fowl that gradually come crowding out of the undergrowth into the clearing to feed there. On the sandbank on which I look down as it extends far along the course of the river, there are some thirty huge crocodiles sunning themselves. I can see several smaller specimens of these mail-clad lizards on a flat part of the river margin not far from the sandbank.
Yesterday, too, six giant hippopotami paid a visit to this sandbank on the primeval river, and left tracks that my eye can plainly see in the glowing sunshine; to-day, however, I have waited in vain for them to show themselves. But suddenly from the reed-beds on the opposite bank of the stream the mighty voice of an old bull comes booming across to me.
Over this most peaceful picture of animal life the tropical sun blazes, casting deep shadows. At this hour of the day even the voices of the birds are generally silent. Only the melodious piping of the organ-shrike sounds somewhere near me, and often, too, the cries of one or other of the baboons which is being corrected with bangs and cuffs by an older member of the pack.