[Illustration: AN ALARUM-TURACO (_CHIZAERHIS LEUCOGASTRA_) IN ITS PLACE OF SAFETY AMONG THE ACACIA THORNS.]
And again I hear the great wood ringing and echoing with the countless cries of birds. There was a time, too, when the call of millions of the now all but extinct passenger pigeon resounded in North America; so, too--and of this I have no doubt--the cooing of the ringdoves was heard repeated by thousands of birds in our beech and oak woods at home when the acorns and beech-nuts were in season.
On the lonely uninhabited western slopes of the highest giant mountain of the German possessions, Mount Kilimanjaro, certain forest fruits flourish in profusion. There is heard on every side a strong, sweet-sounding dove-note, like that of our ringdove. A handsome large species of wood-pigeon (_Columba aquatrix_, Tem.) has gathered in hundreds of thousands. The rustle of their wings, as they rise or come down in great flocks,mingles with their beautiful calls and cries; the ear can hear nothing else. Voice, form, and movement so strongly remind one of our own ringdoves that one feels carried away to far-off, familiar scenes, and the illusion is helped by the character of the Kilimanjaro landscape, which in certain of the higher regions has less of a tropical than of a northern aspect. How strange it is; the cry of this bird all at once transports the traveller to his own land! Truly _there is a magic in sound_. With the poorest appliances, the slightest equipment, the creative fancy can in a moment build a bridge to the Fatherland. The call of this beautiful dove sounding here on every side, its love-inspired circling high in air above the tops of the giants of the primeval forest, surrounds it with a dream-picture, and makes me suddenly breathe the air of the beech woods. I am in the northern woods in springtime; cool and fragrant the northern air blows round me. But ah! thousands of miles of land and sea divide me from all that, and cool reflective reason counts only on the possibility, not the certainty, of my ever seeing my native land again.
And yet this beautiful picture has a strengthening and consoling influence. It drives away the trouble of home-sickness--a dismal thing!