Large Columns Of Smoke Rose Daily From Different Points Of The
Horizon, Showing That The Natives Were Burning Off The Immense Crops
Of Tall Grass, Here A Nuisance, However Valuable Elsewhere.
A white
cloud was often observed to rest on the head of the column, as if a
current of hot damp air was sent up by the heat of the flames and its
moisture was condensed at the top.
Rain did not follow, though
theorists have imagined that in such cases it ought.
Large game, buffaloes, and zebras, were abundant abreast the island,
but no men could be seen. On the mainland, over on the right bank of
the river, we were amused by the eccentric gyrations and evolutions
of flocks of small seed-eating birds, who in their flight wheeled
into compact columns with such military precision as to give us the
impression that they must be guided by a leader, and all directed by
the same signal. Several other kinds of small birds now go in
flocks, and among others the large Senegal swallow. The presence of
this bird, being clearly in a state of migration from the north,
while the common swallow of the country, and the brown kite are away
beyond the equator, leads to the conjecture that there may be a
double migration, namely, of birds from torrid climates to the more
temperate, as this now is, as well as from severe winters to sunny
regions; but this could not be verified by such birds of passage as
ourselves.
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