timid cousin, with an ever repeated “Kí-kü-kü--kí-kü-kü,” that resounds
monotonously in the distance.
There is a strange charm in continually hearing these voices again and
again, without knowing the little singers; and a triumph at last in
making out which they are.
“During a sleepless night,” said Richard Wagner, “I once went out upon
the balcony of my window on the Grand Canal at Venice. As if in a deep
dream the legend-haunted city of the lagoons lay spread out before me
under the darkness. Out of the soundless silence there came the loud
call of a gondolier waking up just then on his boat ... then from the
farthest distance the same call answered back along the dark canal;
I recognised the old, melancholy, melodious sounds, doubtless as old
as the canals of Venice and their people. After a solemn pause the
far-sounding dialogue at last began, and it seemed to me to melt into
harmony, till the notes heard close at hand and coming more softly from
afar died away as sleep came back to me again.”
Who could describe in such noble words the impression made upon our
minds by the spell of the sounds and songs of the nocturnal wildness,
and all its strange and beautiful music? All that at first is strange
there, and even alarming, comes gradually to be something one loves
intimately. Shall I ever be able to listen to it all again? Who knows?
Let me try then to make some record of what I have so often heard, and
in these few sentences attempt to give some faint echo of these once
familiar voices.
We are in the midst of the great forest. Giant podocarpus and juniper
trunks rise up towards the sky. It is cool and shady all around us
here; we breathe a moist, and not unfrequently a musty air. The
sunlight plays only upon the tops of these giants of the primeval
woods, and can but scantily illumine the almost bare ground below them,
sending here and there shimmering, dancing rays of light amongst the
tree-trunks. High overhead the giants arch their branches, interlacing
them in a vast living roof of green. Only where clearings make a
break in the mass of trees, a sea of light floods all the ground--a
flood of light so strong that our eyes, accustomed to the obscurity,
the mysterious semi-darkness of the forest, are dazzled, and there
comes to our minds involuntarily recollections of old Bible pictures,
in which such floods of light are shown streaming down from heaven to
earth. A confusion of trees, creepers and undergrowth, with amidst it
uprooted tree-trunks lying mouldering away; the earth black, and often
marshy; no road or way far and wide, but only here and there the tracks
and beaten paths made by the elephants and rhinoceroses that have
roamed the old forest since primeval times.
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
ZEBRAS AND GNUS. [p. 292]
Deep silence all around. If the traveller stands still and holds his
breath, this silence seems to weigh down upon the soul with a weird
force. At such moments it is as though some vague disaster threatened,
or something wicked and dangerous were creeping around unseen.
Suddenly, a squealing and chattering. There is a scurry up and down
the tree-trunks, and again there is a strange sound of spitting
and growling. Just now there had come over us a feeling such as is
expressed in Böcklin’s[43] masterly picture, directly inspired by
nature, _Schweigen des Waldes_ (the “Silence of the Forest”). We had
almost expected each moment that legends set before us by the power of
his genius would here become realities; we felt that here one might
surprise nymphs and dryads. The spell is soon broken. The gnomes of
the primeval forest, the tree-climbing hyraxes, have scared away the
silence. Wonderful to say, these dwarfish _hoofed animals_, the nearest
still surviving relatives of the rhinoceros, are here scrambling up and
down on the trunks of the venerable trees.
From all sides, from every spot, every direction, there resound the
same cries, and again there is silence all around us. Here, far in the
depths of the primeval forest, the bird world seems to have no home.
But hark! I hear a curious chirping, and I notice on a bare bough
above me one of the most gloriously coloured of African birds, the
banded trogon (_Heterotrogon vittatum_, Shell.), which, uttering a most
peculiar sound, is carrying on its characteristic sport--flapping its
beautiful wings.
Then loud-sounding trumpet-like notes break on the ear. We hear a
rushing in the air, and big hornbills with their huge beaks come
sailing, as I judge by their cries, through the air, and alight on the
top of a giant juniper (_Juniperus procera_). They, too, fly away after
awhile; their trumpeting, dies away in the distance, and again there
is silence all around. Their voices and that of the brightly coloured
helmet-bird give to the primeval forest of Africa a strange charm that
is all its own.
But now there suddenly breaks forth a remarkable sound, rising and
again falling as I listen, a strange music of a most peculiar kind.
It is the chatter of the colobus monkeys, a sound that cannot be
described in words. A party of these wonderful creatures seems to
be in good humour, for their song comes to me in chorus unceasingly,
and in rising strength. “Murúh-murúh-murúh-rrrrrrmúh rrrrrrmúh-murúh
quoi-quo-quo-quo-rrrr,” it sounds, now swelling strongly out, now
gently dying away. These, too, are doomed to death, who now are letting
us hear their primitive song, that in our days may so easily be their
death-song; for these monkeys are keenly hunted for the sake of their
beautiful fur, and their song often betrays them to the hunter, eager
for their spoils. Some poisoned darts, which I find here with points as
sharp as needles, and which were once shot with a bad aim at the little
monkeys, are evidence enough of this.
[Illustration: AN ALARUM-TURACO (_CHIZAERHIS LEUCOGASTRA_) IN ITS PLACE
OF SAFETY AMONG THE ACACIA THORNS.]
And again I hear the great wood ringing and echoing with the countless
cries of birds. There was a time, too, when the call of millions of the
now all but extinct passenger pigeon resounded in North America; so,
too--and of this I have no doubt--the cooing of the ringdoves was heard
repeated by thousands of birds in our beech and oak woods at home when
the acorns and beech-nuts were in season.
On the lonely uninhabited western slopes of the highest giant
mountain of the German possessions, Mount Kilimanjaro, certain forest
fruits flourish in profusion. There is heard on every side a strong,
sweet-sounding dove-note, like that of our ringdove. A handsome large
species of wood-pigeon (_Columba aquatrix_, Tem.) has gathered in
hundreds of thousands. The rustle of their wings, as they rise or come
down in great flocks,mingles with their beautiful calls and cries;
the ear can hear nothing else. Voice, form, and movement so strongly
remind one of our own ringdoves that one feels carried away to far-off,
familiar scenes, and the illusion is helped by the character of the
Kilimanjaro landscape, which in certain of the higher regions has less
of a tropical than of a northern aspect. How strange it is; the cry
of this bird all at once transports the traveller to his own land!
Truly _there is a magic in sound_. With the poorest appliances, the
slightest equipment, the creative fancy can in a moment build a bridge
to the Fatherland. The call of this beautiful dove sounding here on
every side, its love-inspired circling high in air above the tops of
the giants of the primeval forest, surrounds it with a dream-picture,
and makes me suddenly breathe the air of the beech woods. I am in the
northern woods in springtime; cool and fragrant the northern air blows
round me. But ah! thousands of miles of land and sea divide me from all
that, and cool reflective reason counts only on the possibility, not
the certainty, of my ever seeing my native land again.
And yet this beautiful picture has a strengthening and consoling
influence. It drives away the trouble of home-sickness--a dismal thing!
I can hear many other voices besides these in the primeval forest. But
those that impress themselves in the most completely enduring way on
the memory are the strange cry of the tree-hyrax, the peculiar note
of the hornbills, that calling of the doves, the remarkable chorus of
song of the ‘Mbega monkeys, strange beyond all description, and the
trumpeting of the lord of the primeval forest, the elephant.
Another tone-picture--an early morning at a drinking-place in the
desert. One could feel the cold in the night, but the quick coming
warmth of the equatorial sun’s rays has soon roused the animal
world to active life. There is the cry and call of the francolins
on all sides. But the chief part in this early concert is taken
by the thousands of turtle-doves, flying from all directions to
the water. Everywhere a murmuring and cooing, that the Masai are
able to re-echo so incomparably in the name of the turtle-dove in
their language--“‘Ndurgulyu.” As an accompaniment to this, there
is the rustling and wing-clapping of all the feathered visitors
at the water. Towards evening, the air in the neighbourhood of a
much-visited drinking-place is literally filled with these beautiful
and swift-winged birds. The rustling and beating of their wings in
rapid flight makes in itself a concert. I not unfrequently came upon
places that bore the name of the “Doves’ water,” or the “Doves’
resting-place.” All the various voices of the many species of doves
that find a home in the Nyíka resound again in the traveller’s ears
for years after. Whether it be the strange voice of the parrot-pigeon,
that ushers in the concert with a hollow “Kruh-kruh” and follows it
up with some remarkable notes, or the melancholy cry of the little
steel-spotted pigeon that comes to us from the thickets, or the
strong, loud-sounding love-notes of the already-mentioned _Columba
aquatrix_, Tem., so like our ringdove, or, above all, the familiar
sweet voices of the many small kinds of turtle-doves--all these sounds,
the rustling and fluttering and beating of wings, the living, moving
picture presented by all these beautiful birds, belong inseparably
to the essence and being of the Nyíka. When the turtle-doves greet
the morning with their soft cooing, their call is answered from afar
by strange guttural tones borne swiftly through the air, sounding,
like “Gle-glé-lágak-glé-ága-ága,” from the velt-fowl hurrying like
themselves to the water. Brehm, in his _Leben der Vögel_, has already
raised a poetical monument to them made up of beautiful lines. But I
could not picture to myself the morning concert of the bird world in
the Nyíka without the strange cry of the sand-fowl and the cooing of
the doves, and the peculiar sound of the beating wings of the velt-fowl
as they rise in scattered flight from their resting-places,--a sound
that impresses itself strongly and distinctly on the ear, more than
that of any other bird I know, as the “Kláck-kláck-kláck” of the rising
woodcock strikes the ear of the sportsman in Germany.
The wonderful flight of the velt-fowl, their calls and cries, their
hurry and bustle, afforded me ever new interest. It always seemed to
me as though the wide wilderness here sent out its lovingly guarded
favourite children as envoys, with the mission of making it known that
even now, in this dull, barren time, life has not died out even in
the most remote deserts. So I see and hear them once more in fancy,
beautiful, timid, and full of the joy of life. It is thus their
countless millions enliven the wastes of Africa, as well as the endless
tundra marshes of Asia.
Deep, long-drawn-out notes, like those of musical glasses, ring in my
ears. The brooding noonday heat is round me. The sun is in the zenith,
and hardly another sound is to be heard all around. The wilderness lies
before me in the hot glowing sunlight as if dead. My weary bearers have
given themselves up to a dozing sleep, at the place where I have at
last halted, after a march of many hours with a few companions.
Before me is a miniature mountain-world lighted up by the dazzling
sunbeams. There is a mass of precipitous rocks, so characteristic of
the Masai-Nyíka district, that stretches away into the distance. The
Candelabra Euphorbias spread out their strange forms against the light,
in grotesque clumps, and seem to me to make themselves one with the
rocks, whose inorganic character and nature appear to be repeated in
their characteristic forms.
From out of the midst of this stony wilderness these remarkable notes
come sounding in my ears. They seem to be mysterious voices of rock and
stone. The eye searching expectantly for the singer that is uttering
this bell-like melodious music can discover nothing. And yet the notes
come from the throat of a bird. It is once more some hornbills that are
making their song of love and wooing resound in this wilderness. I have
been able to listen to them for hours, losing myself in dreams, and I
cannot say why I seemed to identify precisely _these_ bird-voices with
the voice of the African Sphinx, that legendary Sphinx which has sung
already to so many, and lured many back again for ever. Thus may the
songs and voices of the old sanctuaries of Northern Africa once have
been. Again and again, when I heard it, I had to think of those men
who, with burning longing in their hearts, went forth into the Dark
Continent to wrest from it the secrets of its fauna, but had to pay for
the undertaking with their lives.
A burning glow of sunshine, a dazzling light in overwhelming abundance
over all the desert waste of rock--and amidst it, again and again, that
deep, ghostly, metallic note, that directly impresses the traveller as
though it were the language of the wilderness, peculiarly its own. But
how can I describe all this in words?
And at a moment like this, as if to heighten the effect, over there the
voice of the mightiest bird that the earth bears in this our day
sounds forth. I hear in the distance the ringing cry of a hen-ostrich,
and I listen to it with attention strained to the highest point.
[Illustration:
_C. G. Schillings, phot._
NESTS OF WEAVER-BIRDS ON THE BOUGHS OF AN ACACIA.]
The strange duet has now long died away. But it often comes up to me
again in the midst of the movement of civilised life and takes me back
on the wings of fancy to the glorious beauty of the wilderness.
But that uncouth tropical singer is not really needed to conjure up
this frame of mind. A little unseen _lark_, all by itself, can evoke
for me the charm of the solitudes of Nyíka as with a magic wand.
How this comes to pass, I will tell the reader. We must make a long
tour. Now we are in the north, in our native country, in the midst
of the spring, amongst spreading fields of our German homeland. The
song of the lark fills the air, and our heart expands to its music.
We go out upon the open moor. We hear a trilling and quavering
of another kind, with a strangely sweet touch of sadness in it,
especially at night--the song of the woodlark. But now let the reader
follow me to the little island of Heligoland. In the glare from the
lighthouse, that sends afar its rays,--in this case rays that bring
destruction,--countless numbers of larks flutter and wheel about,
bewildered in the darkness of the autumn night, and full of anxiety and
fear. On a dark, rainy October night thousands of them fall victims to
the death that lies waiting in ambush for them below this tower raised
by the hand of man. Their little wings have brought them safe over the
ocean to the small island. But there one hears no rejoicing song, No!
there resounds only something like an agonised cry for help from weak
creatures in the direst peril of death.
Millions of larks fly thus each year southwards and northwards,
obedient to that mysterious migratory impulse that guides them on their
way.
The song of the lark and the cry of the lark are very different things.
To those who know them they mean a song of happy springtime, and a cry
for help in the night of death.
How comes it that I thus speak of, and have to think of, sounds uttered
by the birds here at home? Simply because over there, in other lands,
my fancy so often and so readily imagined the flying bird to be a
messenger,--a courier for thoughts of home,--and connected such wishes
and longings with its appearance and disappearance.
In autumn, the noblest of our northern songsters makes its way in
a few days and nights into the inmost heart of the Dark Continent.
It disappears again in spring, to return to the north over velt and
desert, morass, mountain and sea. The cuckoo, that only a few days ago
could be seen in our northern lands by the eyes of men who knew how to
recognise it, I see on the African velt, a wandering, fleeting visitor.
Thus it seems to bring me a greeting, like that brought by our oriole,
our nightingale, and many other children of the homeland.
No one can be surprised that in these solitudes these birds, and their
coming and going, are closely associated with our thoughts. It is the
less to be wondered at seeing that they are all such eloquent witnesses
to the miracle that these weak creatures with their feeble wings twice
each year traverse continents and fly safely over seas.
We cannot help thinking of the lark and its spring song at home,
when in the wilds of Africa we hear its voice; and it appeals so
impressively to the wanderer in the wilderness, that afterwards it has
the power of bringing back by its music a picture of the Nyíka in all
its characteristic wildness. It is a song that has a character of its
own. When I hear it, if it is in the Nyíka, I cannot help thinking
of the songster’s frail, weak brethren of Europe, that, following an
irresistible impulse, are perhaps at this moment meeting their death
on the little island of Heligoland--obedient to the same instinct that
sends myriads of their kind each year towards pole or equator. For even
as the northern song of the lark awakens the soft, poetic spell of
smiling fields, so, too, the mysterious and still deeply veiled spell
of the Nyíka can find expression in its wonderful music.
Small, invisible almost, it rises in the air. Soon it is lost to sight
in the sky. Then suddenly a song that, though so often heard before,
is still a marvel, comes distinctly on the ear, its notes sharply
accented and emphasised as if it were _close to us_. There is a sharp,
rhythmical, clapping sound, as if small laths or pieces of whalebone
were being rattled together. It comes from that tree right in front of
us. No mistake about it seems possible. But the eye searches in vain
for the producer of the sound.
Again and again one is deceived in this way. Who could imagine that
that little bird far away over there, a hardly perceptible speck on
the horizon, is producing this strange music? “Knáck! knáck! knáck!”
again, and yet again, it comes to us ringing out loud and clear. Our
little invisible songster does not tire of pouring out its strange
misleading song. It is a kind of love-song of a species of lark, which
was discovered by Fischer some fifteen years ago and bears the name of
the naturalist, now long deceased; _Mirafra fischeri_, Rchw.,[44] is
its scientific name. Its clapping and rattling are undoubtedly part of
the charm of a journey in certain districts of the Masai-Nyíka.
Even in my tent, in the midst of the comparatively loud noise of the
busy camp of my numerous caravan, I can hear the clapping, rattling
voice of this lark. Some hundreds of yards away it flies up into the
sky, like our own skylark, and hovers about clattering in the air, so
loudly and distinctly that if I did not know its character and habits,
I would have been continually looking for it close to my tent. It is
very hard to quite free oneself from this illusion. One continually
thinks that one hears the cry of the bird in one’s immediate
neighbourhood, the sound being produced much in the same way as that of
the snipe.
And yet another strange voice of a lark resounds in my ears: a
melancholy, plaintive, soft sound, till now unknown to me and to most
others. All night long its calls and cries resound about my camp. I
should never have thought that it was a lark (_Mirafra intercedens_
Rchw.) that thus made itself heard in the night, as our woodlarks do in
moonlight nights at home. It was at the cost of much careful research
that the discovery was made of what bird produced this song.
And the strange voice of yet another bird is inseparable from my
recollections of the wilderness of East Africa. The xerophytic flora of
the far-spreading thorny mimosa thickets gives shelter to a privileged
member of the bird world, which is thus guarded in safety from all
danger amid their thorny boughs and branches. I refer to a peculiar
bird, belonging to the group of the Musophagidæ, grey-feathered,
green-beaked, long-tailed, and adorned with a crest. This strange
fellow roves about restlessly--a bird about as big as a jay, misleading
the traveller with his cry in the most curious way. Science calls him
_Chizaerhis leucogastra_, Rüpp.; the German language has given him the
name “_Lärmvogel_” (“noisy bird”).
And he has a perfect right to bear his name. There resounds somewhere
near us, and in a way that completely deceives us, now the barking and
snarling of a dog, now the bleating of sheep. Following the direction
of the sound we look to see what produces it, and we find our bird
hopping about nimbly upon the tops of the thorn-trees and acacias,
appearing to have no anxiety about the thorny spikes of the branches,
in which he makes his home. With a cleverness that borders on the
miraculous he makes his way amongst them, protected by them against the
attacks of birds or beasts of prey, and in his conscious reliance on
the security of his dwelling-place, so to say, mocking at all enemies.
So deceptive are his cries that at first, and especially when I was
in the neighbourhood of native settlements, I was continually looking
everywhere for sheep and their shepherds.
Many other typical bird-voices live in my memory. I hear the peculiar
plaintive cry of the large cormorants that are busy with their fishing
by the salt lakes of the wilderness, a cry that seems most fitted for
these solitudes. The mysterious chattering and chirping of the little
swamp-fowl come to my ear from the shallows and the bushes along the
banks of silent rivers of the primeval forest, a bird-language so
strange that the natives believe the birds are conversing with the fish
in the stream. I hear the cackling of the knowing Nile-geese, that seem
to be always engaged in conversation; when on the wing, too, a pair of
them, in their affectionate fidelity, have always some warning, some
reminder of something or other to call out to each other. Where their
cry resounds one hears also frequently that of the wonderful, wailing
peewit; it has a plaintive and melancholy effect on the mind of the
listener. Far different is the noisy outcry of its brightly coloured
cousin, a denizen of the thirsty wilderness (_Stephanibyx coronatus_,
Bodd.). Shrill and harsh the voice of the bird rings out, a watch-cry
by day and night, and when in bright moonlight nights they fly in
flocks over the camp. Swarms of these remarkable birds, the police of
the wilderness in feathered uniforms, flutter around the traveller as
he approaches. They ruin his attempts to stalk wild animals, and their
strident screeches, to which all other animals hearken, haunt him long
after, as also the call and cry of the large, yellow-eyed thick-knee,
an inhabitant of the loneliest solitudes. But I cannot imagine the
low shores of African lakes and the sea-coast without the cry of the
widely distributed sandpiper, which has its home in the far north. In
winter its low plaintive cry is heard at every step: but even in summer
the trained ear can distinguish it here and there. These individual
stragglers from the north are thus to be found during all times of the
year in this distant country, while the most of their kindred tribe
have successfully made their way to the Polar lands, their usual
summer breeding-place.
[Illustration:
A SHRIKE (_LANIUS CAUDATUS_, Cab.) ON THE LOOK-OUT FROM THE
HIGH BOUGHS OF AN ACACIA. ITS CRIES WHEN IT SEES A HUNTER ON
THE MOVE OFTEN WARN THE ANIMALS HE IS STALKING.]