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.