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We cannot hail our black-billed as "blithe newcomer," as Wordsworth does his cuckoo. "Doleful newcomer" would be a fitter title. There is nothing cheery or animated in his note, and he is about as much a "wandering voice" as is the European bird. He does not babble of sunshine and of flowers. He is a prophet of the rain, and the country people call him the rain crow.
Pope, "Essay on Man." About five miles from Kynaston Hall, as the crow flies, across the fields, stood, as the house-agents would have described it, "a large and commodious modern mansion, standing in about eighty acres of well-timbered park land." I do not know that any description that could be given of Shadonake would so well answer to the reality as the above familiar form of words.
A crow and a white egret once made their nests in the same tree, and when the nestlings began to grow up the crow saw how pretty and white the young egrets were, and thought them much nicer than her own black young ones. So one day when the egret was away, the crow changed the nestlings and brought the little white egrets, to her own nest.
An hour later I was eating one of the crows; and, as Gunga Dass had said, thanking my God that I had a crow to eat. Never as long as I live shall I forget that evening meal. The whole population were squatting on the hard sand platform opposite their dens, huddled over tiny fires of refuse and dried rushes.
"All of us have our failings, and for one I've got my appetite along with me pretty much all the time. He happens to be a big fellow, and in fine health, so he feels hungry as many as six times a day, especially when in the woods, where the air tones up the system." Leaving the river with some regret they started to head for the camp that lay possibly a mile and a half away "as the crow flies."
Like most of the settlers he had very little confidence in the Indian character; so, although Crow Wing had rendered the defenders of the Grants a signal service that very day, Enoch was not at all sure that the red youth was not helping the Yorkers, too.
It happened that there was nobody about. And, luckily, Mr. Crow found enough corn scattered near the door of the corn-crib to furnish him with a good dinner. And he pulled out an elderberry. "That won't do!" he said. "It's too early in the season for elderberries." But he ate the sample though he found it rather dry, for it was a last year's berry.
"'Husband! brother! she cried, 'listen to me, and give up the mad errand on which ye are bent; for the bloodhound is snuffing the air and gnashing its teeth, and the hooded crow clapping its wings for a feast, and the owl has looked east, west, north, and south, from the auld turret it has screamed wi' joy, and its eyes are fixed on Simprin!
I was informed by a competent authority on the island that there are four hundred of these pastoral villages between Ras Kalenzia and Ras Momi, a distance of some seventy odd miles as the crow flies; and from the frequency with which we came across them during our marches up only a limited number of Sokotra's many valleys, I should think the number is not over-estimated.
Here Edith and her mother discovered multitudes of berries, the most numerous being cloud and crow berries; both of which were found to be good, especially the former, and a fragrant dish of these graced the towel that evening at supper.
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