recommend them.

But we are apt to forget that the greater portion of Tropical Africa,
certainly all that is over five hundred feet above the sea, which
constitutes the greater part of the country with the exception of the
coast region, is not at all true to the picture that most of us have in
our minds. For the character of the interior is vastly different: great
rolling plains of yellow grass and thorn scrub, with the denser foliage
of deciduous trees along the river-banks. Here, indeed, you may find
sad-coloured birds that are gifted with the sweetest of songs. In the
bed of the Morogoro River lives a warbler who sings from the late
afternoon until dusk, and he is one of the very few birds that have that
deep contralto note, the "Jug" of the nightingale. And there are little
wrens with drab bodies and crimson tails that live beside the dwellings
of men and pick up crumbs from the doors of our tents, and hunt the rose
trees for insects. In the thorn bushes of higher altitudes are grey
finches that might have learnt their songs beside canary cages. The
African swallows, red headed and red backed, have a most tuneful little
song; they used to delight our wounded men in hospital at Handeni when
they built their nests in the roofs of this one-time German jail, and
sang to reward us for the open windows that allowed them to feed their
broods of young.

In the mealie fields are francolins in coveys, very like the red-legged
partridge in their call, though in plumage nearer to its English
brother. There, too, the ubiquitous guinea fowl, the spotted "kanga"
that has given us so many blessed changes of diet, utters his strident
call from the tops of big thorn trees. The black and white meadow lark
is here, but the "khoran" or lesser bustard of South Africa, that
resembles him so much in plumage on a much larger scale, is absent. The