BUSHBUCKS, KOODOOS, AND ELANDS 441 



Speke and Grant, while sojourning in Karagwe, west of 

 the Victoria Nyanza, were presented by the ruler of the dis- 

 trict, King Rumanika, with a live specimen and some heads 

 of the sitatunga, obtained in some of the small lakes of the 

 neighborhood. These specimens formed the basis for Scla- 

 ter's description of the species in Speke's "^Journal of the Dis- 

 covery of the Source of the Nile." Very few sportsmen have 

 met with the sitatunga, however. Gedge, in 1893, secured 

 a large number from one of the small islands of the Sessi 

 group in the Victoria Nyanza. More recently one has 

 been obtained near Kampala, Uganda, by Kermit Roosevelt. 

 Sportsmen have also recorded them from swamps at the 

 west base of Elgon, on the headwaters of the 'Nzoia River, 

 east of Elgon, and the Bahr-el-Ghazal district. Although 

 sitatungas have been secured by several sportsmen recently 

 in the Bahr-el-Ghazal district, they are not yet known to 

 occur in the intervening stretch of the Nile from the Albert 

 Nyanza to the mouth of the Bahr-el-Ghazal. 



We only came on the sitatunga in the Uganda marshes. 

 It is the most water-loving of antelopes, never leaving the 

 marshes except at night to feed in the meadows in their 

 immediate vicinity. Its exceedingly long hoofs make it a 

 slow and clumsy runner on dry land, but enable it to thread 

 its way with ease through mud and water among the high 

 reeds. In the reed beds it is practically safe from all enemies, 

 and it is rarely so much as seen; but at night when feeding 

 outside them it is occasionally killed by the leopard, and 

 even by the lion. In certain places it can be killed in time 

 of flood from canoes, owing to having been drowned out of its 

 proper haunts; but ordinarily the only way to get it is to 

 have a marsh driven by beaters. It makes well-beaten 

 paths through its haunts, in the papyrus, the reeds, and the 

 long grass, and it sneaks through these so silently, and is so 

 exceedingly shy that it is hard to get a glimpse of it as it 



