[Illustration: FORMATION OF A FLOCK OF FLAMINGOES IN FLIGHT.] [Illustration: _C. G. Schillings, phot._ FLIGHT OF FLAMINGOES (TAKEN AT SHORTER RANGE. THERE WERE THOUSANDS IN THIS FLOCK).] In the lagoons one sees emerge from the surface the head of a great giant snake, a good five yards long, the African python; others I have come upon suddenly on the open velt. There are continually thrilling moments! It may be that memory conjures up for us the delightful fairy-like image of a rare dwarf antelope seen perhaps once only in the shades of the forest, a dwarf antelope that, with strange large eyes and ears alert, watches one’s approach, and then like a flash of lightning disappears in the thickets; it may be that in memory one sees the reddish brown, mud-smeared body of a giant elephant emerge from the midst of some densely tangled primeval forest; it may be that a tree suddenly bursting into bloom yields me a wonderfully beautiful new kind of bird, which I grasp in my hand, delighted with its robe of feathers; it may be that suddenly the massive giant form of a rhinoceros appears before me in the tall grass, unexpected, menacing, standing as if chiselled out of stone; it may be that my free gaze ranges without limit over the wide prospect, and sees in primitive abundance the strange life of the tropics; in every case the impressions received seem to the beholder fascinating beyond description. Monotonous as the surroundings of the landscape may appear to the newcomer, poor and barren though the velt may seem to be for weeks at a time, yet, enlivened and permeated by the mighty flood of all this strange animal life, it has a beauty and a charm whose influence no one can escape who makes his way into the midst of it with open heart and eyes. He who looks around him with clear-sighted vision, and tries to see more than others, has revealed to him the beauties of Nature in the greatest and most wonderful way, and is drawn in the highest sense of the word to admiration of them. Here is verified, as Sir Harry Johnston says in his preface to my first book, “the old nursery story of eyes and no eyes.” It is thus that I lie for long hours in the wilderness, and observe, admire and enjoy. What a wealth of impressions is brought before the eyes among these ever-changing, at first strange but gradually familiar sights, in the midst of the foreign-looking landscape, bathed in a light that has a marvellous influence, and in its full power is almost blinding.