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Updated: September 21, 2025
He will see ravens and hawks about the crags, and about the river half covered in summer with floating pond-weed, watercress, and the broad leaves of the yellow lily, he will notice many a water-ouzel bobbing with white breast, water-hens gliding from bank to bank, merry bands of divers, and the brilliant blue gleam of the passing kingfisher, which here is allowed to fish in peace, like the otter.
As the sun rose she stood up in the boat, and shading her eyes with her hand to shut out its level rays, looked before her. "There is the place," she said, pointing to a little bulrush-clad isle, from which a kind of natural causeway, not more than six feet wide, projected like a tongue among muddy shallows peopled by coots and water-hens with their red-beaked young. Martin rose too.
Claude, may follow the more picturesque route by way of the wonderful little lake of Grandvaux, shut in by mountains, and peopled with fish of all kinds, water-hens, and other wild birds. We are now in the wildest and most grandiose region of the Jura, and whichever road we take is sure to lead us through grand scenery.
"Avicenna, after this, is for having the part anointed with the syrup of hellebore, using proper evacuations and purges and I believe rightly. But thou must eat little or no goat's flesh, nor red deer nor even foal's flesh by any means; and carefully abstain that is, as much as thou canst, from peacocks, cranes, coots, didappers and water-hens.
We lunched and took our midday siesta under a wide-spreading sycamore by the stream, after walking up alongside the lakes for nearly two miles; fat milch cows, not unlike our own, were feeding by the rushing stream; birds of all descriptions filled the branches of the trees, water-hens and herons and ducks were in abundance on one of the lakes, bulrushes and water-weeds grew in them; it would be an ideal little spot in any country, but in Arabia it was a marvel.
A couple of stiff-necked swans floated in motionless trance upon it; black water-hens flapped in flashing, splashing flight to safety as Christian came near; a string of patchwork coloured mandarin-ducks propelled themselves in jerks towards her, confident that any human being meant food.
Water-hens were so numerous that we could not pass by so good an opportunity, and camped early in consequence, spending the rest of the day in shooting these birds. The rest was a good thing for Breaden, too, who had been hurt by Kruger as he struggled in the salt-bog. The next morning we struck South, and by night found the lake again in our way.
There was on the opposite side of the creek a long grassy flat, with box-trees growing on it, together with a new Bauhinia, which we saw here for the first time. On this grassy flat there were a number of the water-hens we had noticed on the little fresh-water creek near Lake Torrens.
Ducks of various sorts were here in thousands, and the water-hens, or gallinules, which visited the settlements on the Swan some years ago, were plentiful. Mr. Gilbert shot three or four at a shot. I found a fine Baechia, which had been first found by my son James, and a curious new plant belonging to Compositae, but not yet in flower.
As there is a large heronry and rookery on the trees on the islands, the variety of life there is very great. The writer saw in weather like that in the second week of February, 1902, about a hundred and fifty wild duck, thirty or forty widgeon, a few teal, a pochard, and a great number of water-hens.
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