I Learn That These Good People, To Make Topographical Confusion
Worse Confounded, Call A River By One Name When You
Are going up it,
and by another when you are coming down; just as if you called the
Thames the
London when you were going up, and the Greenwich when you
were coming down. The banks all round this lake or broad, seem all
light-coloured sand and clay. We pass out of it into a channel.
Current flowing north. As we are entering the channel between banks
of grass-overgrown sand, a superb white crane is seen standing on
the sand edge to the left. Gray Shirt attempts to get a shot at it,
but it - alarmed at our unusual appearance - raises itself up with one
of those graceful preliminary curtseys, and after one or two
preliminary flaps spreads its broad wings and sweeps away, with its
long legs trailing behind it like a thing on a Japanese screen.
The river into which we ran zigzags about, and then takes a course
S.S.E. It is studded with islands slightly higher than those we
have passed, and thinly clad with forest. The place seems alive
with birds; flocks of pelican and crane rise up before us out of the
grass, and every now and then a crocodile slides off the bank into
the water. Wonderfully like old logs they look, particularly when
you see one letting himself roll and float down on the current. In
spite of these interests I began to wonder where in this lonely land
we were to sleep to-night.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 239 of 705
Words from 66235 to 66500
of 194943
