232 WHERE LIVES PRIMITIVE MAN respect of his eyes ; while having most reprehensibly let slip a short pregnant word beginning with d on realizing that a shot had gone wide, your shikari wiU hasten to assure you that you are mistaken, and there is no " blood."

A Nuer sent with a message to a viUage one night reported that on the way he had seen the fresh spoor of a big lion, but the latter took care to steer clear of the boat.

Palms now began to show in the distance, and great was our delight at the thought of getting away from the dreary monotony of the swamp. We headed for a long line of palms stretching in from the west, and made meandering progress towards them for considerable time. But the river was also in league with the gods of the country, and, when within a short distance, one big bend of the stream took us definitely away from the trees.

Native tulds were now seen in plenty, jutting up against the horizon, four or five miles away ft-om the river, which in the past had been the highway of the Arabs who raided and enslaved their owners.

But before this appearance of human habitation, one of the strange mysteries of the country had light thrown upon it. Often had one asked, when the eye rested on thousands of cranes, egrets, ibis, divers, and the multitudinous varieties of waterbirds, Where do these birds nest, or those of them who do not migrate for the purpose ? The answer here was forthcoming in parts of the great sodden plain. At a distance from the stream, in bogland