The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-07-21
BIG BIRDS AND BEASTS.
ALONG THE SHORES OF LKAE
 NAIVASHA, AFRICA.


 Country That Reminds of a We'll Stocked geological Garden--Great
 Flock of FIaIningOes and HerOns--
 Gazelles NIingling With sheepHart-
 tecsts.
 The modern traveller who goes by the Uganda Railway from Mombasa to the Victoria Nyanza has many wonders in store for him. For several hours at first, as the line winds quickly upward from the coast, he may see glorious views of the Indian ocean (the last for a long time U come) and its beautiful bays and harbors The belt of inhabit- ed and cultivated country is narrow and soon passed; palm trees and man. goes and bananas disappear and give place to queer looking euphorbias and yellow Towering acacias; it is dreary and waterless land, where little but | thorns will flourish.
 F5r many hours he travels through a country that reminds him of well stocked farm or rather of the zooloGical gardens, writes A. F. R. Wolaston in the Westminster Gazette Huge herds Of hartbeasts, zebras and gazelles, patries of wildbeests and ostriches, bus- tards and cranes are scattered far and wide over the plain, and if he be lucky he may see a herd of giraffes or a family If lions If he seems to be q stanger in the land half dozen differ ent fellow passengers will tell him the story of the unhappy lion hunter who slept at his post in the railway carriage and was carried out of the window and eaten by the very lion he went out to kill More notable still is a sight of Kilimanjaro, huge truncated pyamid of snow rising out of the morning mists sixty miles to the southward. Kenla, too, too, may be seen, or more likely, great cloud banks, where the moun- tain lies hidden.
 After many hours of tollsome climb ing through scrub and swamp and pun gle always upward the engine whis- tles-it sounds like a sigh of relief-and of sudden we are plunging down from the Kikuyu Escarpment into the Great Rift Valley. It loks indeed like a Promised Land, and its likely with In a few years, if ont to flow with milk and honey, at all events to be filled with cattle and sheep. The climate at tkis altitude 0t -G,6OO feet and more above the sea is healthy for Europeans. Of all the beauties of the Rift Valley there is none that can be compared with the lovely and mysterious Lake Naivasha. It Is hard to believe that this Is Africa and but few miles from the equator. Natvasha has been liken- cd to many different places; one writer was reminded of a gloomy Irish lough-- | perhaps his visit was in wet season, or possibly 1t was the snipe in the swamps; onother was reminded of the Bay of Naples and the view from Posillpo. To my mind ther is some- l thing of New Zealand in the air and in the scene as we'll
 To the wandering naturalist, whether his bent be toward birds, beasts, but ter-fiies or plants, Naivasha is one of those happy hunting grounds that he has dreamed of but has never expected to see. The margain of the lake is fringed with sedges, tall reeds and payrus. Beyond the papyrus is a mar vel of water lilies, red and white and \ blue but mostly blue. Where the shall lows extend far out into the lake there must be near a mile of water flies Tn the morning when the breeze ruf1ies the water and breaks up the reflections of the hills, the green of the transparent upturned leaves, the blue of the flow CTS, the orange of the submerged stems | and the almost amethyst of the water together make very opal color.
 One of the prettiest bird sights l have ever had the good luck to see was here; in a little bay of water lilies, standing on the leaves and preening their plumage, was party of long leg ged, black winged suits, winter mig rants from the north; behind them was a wall of graceful bending papyrus and overhead was snowy Caspian tern
 Among the lilies and on the open water
 beyond are a nyraid coots and grebes ducks and cormorants and furtmher
 still huge pelcans.
 | Overhead are circling and constantly
 crying pair of fish eagles sometime!
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