We had had enough parley for the day, so Dupuis and I started upon an explorers’ tramp, carrying our guns. We walked about two miles in a north-westerly direction, and saw innumerable kinds of water-fowl along the margin of the lake. The birds were scarcely shy of us at all, and we approached within ten yards of wild geese before they rose. I noticed among the mass a species of goose like a big Muscovy duck, with dark green plumage and white feathers in the wings, plovers of all sorts, herons, pelicans, snake-birds, and the ibis in numbers. We shot none, for we had meat enough in store, and it would have been sheer slaughter to do so. I did, indeed, try my luck with some quail that took to the wing, but no harm came to them, and I was not sorry. We returned to the village. It was pleasant to see kine again after the long march through the deserted border-country. They are here of the long-horned, hump-backed “Zebu” kind common throughout Africa and the East.[48] My friend Crawley had taken a rod and line to the edge of the lake. He landed a fish about 2 lb. weight, of the perch tribe. So we had a very complete _menu_. The cold was keen after sundown, but we had a cheery finish to our first day by the lake, after all. And it would hardly be possible to look upon a more lovely scene than that which we saw from our camp when the moon had risen. We were not astir very early in the morning of January 8, and dawdled over breakfast until half-past seven; it is almost worth while to live a strenuous life at times in order to enjoy dawdling afterwards. Dupuis and Crawley set out with an assortment of gear to make a survey, and I amused myself with a butterfly-net and a camera. Then I inspected my patients. Several came into camp from the neighbourhood, as I had expected. The old man with the abscess presented himself, and I found that the injured foot was healing well. He thanked me again very profusely, and I believe that after this second visit he departed to the village whence he came with a good opinion of European surgery. Another Habash found me less satisfactory as a physician. He had come to ask what medicine he could take to cure the headache caused by _tedj_. Now, _tedj_ is the beer, or mead, of the country; it is made from fermented barley, and flavoured with honey diluted in the proportion of one part to three parts of water. It is a very heady—and, to Europeans, a most nasty—drink, and the Abyssinians consume enormous quantities of it. Parkyns was told of a man who was said to have swallowed twenty-six pints at a sitting, on the occasion of a wedding-feast at which the English traveller was present. But he regarded this statement as “a stretcher.”[49] I told the inquirer that the one and only prescription was not to drink _tedj_, and thereupon the little audience of his fellow-countrymen enjoyed a laugh at his expense.[50] [Illustration: HOUSES AT DELGI. _See p._ 79.] [Illustration: WASHING OUT ‘TEDJ’ POTS AT DELGI. _See p._ 79.]