_Feb. 12._—The 12th of February was passed without alarm; the islands were still increasing in number; the river was immensely wide, extending over seven miles. We obtained once a distant view of a village on the right bank. Low islands of alluvial sand, which shot forth rich crops of the _Arundo phragmites_ grass, _Papyrus antiquorum_, and many other varieties of the Cyperaceæ, became more numerous. These were the haunts of Marabu storks, Balearic cranes, the short-legged _Balæniceps Rex_, flamingoes, spur-winged geese, flocks of wild duck, divers, kingfishers, egrets, black as well as white ibis, and snipe. Any number of birds for meat might easily have been obtained, were it not that a single shot would have entailed a combat with musket-armed men. Our only hope of escape from this region was by avoiding ferocious man. On one of these islands we saw an elephant with a pair of magnificent tusks, but he was as safe from us as though we had been unarmed; and on a reedy island of considerable length we saw a herd of red buffalo, which are smaller and very different generally from the black buffalo of the eastern half of the continent. But though we pined for meat, and were accustomed, in countries where strangers are not hunted for their lives, to devote much time to hunting, still we dared not fire. The lives of many men—our own and the natives’—depended on our forbearance. The higher and more wooded islands swarm with baboons, the _Cynocephalus porcarius_, the night-waking lemur, and diminutive long-tailed monkeys. Once a beating of the bushes caused me to look quickly up, and I had just a glimpse of a large species of monkey of a bearded kind, standing up; but the current was inexorable, and we were at that time rowing rapidly, so that it was useless to hope to be able to find him. The channels swarmed with Amphibia—the hippopotamus, crocodile, and monitor. Frequently at the lower end of islands, spits of white gleaming sand were observed, with two or three bloated and monstrous crocodiles basking on them, while smaller ones, at a respectful distance from the sires, imitated their lifelessness, until the splash of our oars caused them, sires and young alike, to hurry waddling to their deep homes. A remarkable feature of the river was its immunity from snags. A few gigantic trees, it is true, were seen stranded on a gleaming islet of sand, but those dangerous obstacles of navigation, so frequent in American rivers, are very rare on the Livingstone. This may be accounted for, perhaps, by the fact that its bed is harder and more compact, and contains a less tenacious alluvium than the river beds of North America. Yet landslips are frequent, and the banks of islands exhibit many prostrate forest monarchs; but by steering a few feet beyond these our descent was never interrupted by any obstructing branch or snag.