The buffaloes are, as it were, the marshman's lifeline, and they are cherished accordingly. At each dawn the buffaloes, who have been sleeping on the buffalo platform or quite frequently round the fire with their owners, leave, infinitely slowly and wearily, their wallowing progress continually punctuated with despairing groans, for the distant reed beds beyond the open water. For a long time they stand on the edge of the platform, groaning to each other of the infinite fatigue of the coming day. Until, at last the leader takes a ponderous pace forward and subsides into the water.

Once in the water a deep lassitude once more descends upon the party, as if they had by now forgotten their intention. Also they may wallow there with low notes of complaint for many minutes. The movements that at length remove them from the immediate vicinity of the house are so gradual as to pass practically unnoticed. But finally they are swimming, so low in the water that their noses seem held above it by a last effort of ebbing strength. Their rolling eyes proclaiming that this is the end at last and that they are drowning. So, patient and protesting and more or less submerged, they spend the day among the reeds and the bulrushes, grazing leisurely upon such green shoots as their antediluvian heads may find at eye level.