n we three went out shooting on the
lake. Two of the Agai Ambu canoes were lashed together and a raft of
split bamboo put across them, and two Agai Ambu men punted and paddled
us about. Before starting we had first educated them up to the report
of our guns, and after a few shots they soon got over their fright.

The lake positively swarmed with water-fowl, including several
varieties of duck, also shag, divers, pigmy geese, small teal, grebe,
red-headed plover, spur-wing plover, curlew, sandpipers, snipe,
swamp hen, water-rail, and many other birds. The red-headed plover
were especially numerous, and ran about on the surface of the lake,
which was covered with the water-lily leaves and a thick sort of mossy
weed. All the birds seemed remarkably tame, and we got a good assorted
bag, chiefly duck--enough to supply most of our large force with.

I stopped most of the time on the raised platform of one of the houses
and shot the duck, which Acland and Monckton put up, as they flew over
my head. I had a companion in old Giwi, the chief of the Kaili-kailis,
many of whom were among our carriers. He seemed to be on very friendly
terms with one of the Agai Ambu on whose hut I was. Presently a woman
came over in a canoe from one of the houses in the far village, and
climbed up on to the platform where we were. Directly she saw old
Giwi, she caught hold of him and hugged and kissed him all over and
rubbed her face against his body, covering him with the black pigment
with which she had smeared her face. She was sobbing all the time
and chanting a very mournful but not unmusical kind of song. This
exhibition lasted over half an hour, and poor old Giwi looked quite
bewildered, and gazed up at me in a most piteous way, as much as to
say: "Awful nuisance, this woman--but what am I to do?" He understood
the meaning of this performance as little as I did. Possibly the
woman was frightened of us, and seeing a stranger of her own colour
in old Giwi, appealed to him for protection. The Baruga, however,
had previously told us that the Agai Ambu had recently captured one
of their women, and I have since thought that this might possibly
have been the woman, and am sorry I did not make inquiries at the
time. At all events, old Giwi was too courteous to shake her off,
though to me it was a most amusing sight, and it was all I could do
to refrain from laughing aloud.

We saw the dead body of a man half-wrapped in mats tied to poles
in the mi