424 A HUNTER'S WANDERINGS ch. 



Miller and French. We then held along the river 

 north-west as far as Mai-ini's town, but finding no 

 elephant spoor, and the Kafirs refusing to take us 

 through the river, we turned back, and shortly after- 

 wards again met Sell. CoUison, French, and Sell 

 then went back to the waggons, whilst Miller and I 

 crossed the Sunta, and again striking the Chobe, 

 followed it down to nearly opposite Linyanti, where 

 we made a camp and hunted for some time. We 

 here shot four elephants and many buffaloes, and 

 other animals, amongst them five of the beautiful 

 little spotted bushbucks peculiar to the Chobe. I 

 here tried very hard to shoot a specimen of the 

 situtunga antelope (^rragelapJius Spekii)^ hunting for 

 them almost daily in a canoe at early dawn and just 

 after sunset, amongst the vast reed-beds through 

 which the Chobe here runs. Searching for these 

 retiring animals amongst such immense beds of reeds 

 and papyrus is, however, almost tantamount to 

 looking for needles in a haystack. I only saw one 

 female just at dusk one evening, standing up to her 

 belly in water, amongst the reeds, but did not get 

 a shot at her. Early on the morning of the 5th of 

 August, I had the good fortune to find a deaci 

 situtunga ram, that had been killed, apparently by a 

 rival, during the night. At any rate he had received 

 a deep wound in the side, just behind the ribs. He 

 was lying quite in the open, in a piece of boggy 

 ground, where the reeds had been burnt off. On 

 examining him I founci that he was a fine old ram, 

 very thick-set and heavy, with an immense neck. 

 He was as nearly as possible the same size as a 

 lechwe ram. I took his skin, and preserved his 

 head and feet very carefully. Shortly after this 

 French and Collison again joined us, Sell having 



