Page:The empire and the century.djvu/860

 papyrus—a Titan sponge which sucks in a score of rivers, and leaves but one to make the long journey to Egypt's cotton-fields.

Here are great reaches of still water, where thousands of hippos lie in long purple bands throughout the day, waiting for the night, when they emerge and scatter through the reed-beds, and their drumming fills the air like summer thunder.

There are huge banks of bottomless mud upon which ducks cluster in solid acres, pelicans squat, geese scream, and golden-crested cranes roost in such countless swarms that their night cries sound like gunfire in the distance—birds by the ten million.

On every side, to the horizon and a hundred miles beyond, lies the endless sea of dark green papyrus.

The great orb of day is sinking lurid in the west; the pools are all aglow; the purple shades of night are already lurking behind the drifting mist-wreaths; the hippos throw their heads on high, and with wide-open mouths bellow welcome to the night; herd upon herd of elephants is plunging eastward to the far-away dom-palms of the Sobat plains; spank-spank sounds the plunge of Nile salmon on the feed; a hundred curling wreaths of smoke show where long, ash-smeared Dinkas are milking cattle; now and again a Nuer drifts past in his canoe, spear poised on high to strike the feeding fish; duck, teal, and geese are flighting overhead in hosts unthinkable, and the air screams with the whistle of a billion wings. Then of a sudden the scene shivers and is gray: the sun has gone, and the writhing mists are paramount; a faint humming seems to permeate the world; it swells to a moan, gathers strength, intensifies, drowns even the great sound of the flighting duck, grows ever louder till the whole marsh seems to roar with sound. King mosquito rules the great Nile swamp. Dinkas are buried deep in cowdung ash; cattle stand motionless in clouds of pungent smoke; the birds have flown and left the marsh to thick-skinned hippos, four-legged fish, and the coming of the dawn.