CH. xiv] A VARIED T?AG 411 



scantily leaved tree to another as 1 disturbed them. At 

 the foot of a steep bluff, several yards from the water, a 

 crocodile lay. I broke its neck with a soft-nosed bullet 

 from the little S})rin_iTffield ; for the plated skin of a 

 crocodile offers no resistance to a modern riHe. We 

 dragoed the ut>ly man-eater u]) tlie bank, and sent one 

 of the porters back to camp to brini>' out cnouoh men to 

 carry tlie brute in bodily. It was a female, containing 

 thirty eggs. We did not find any crocodile's nest ; but 

 near camp, in digging a hole for the disposal of refuse, 

 we came on a clutch of a dozen eggs of the monitor 

 lizard. They were in sandy loam, two feet and a half 

 beneath the surface, without the vestige of a burrow 

 leading to them. When exposed to the sun, unlike 

 the crocodile's eggs, they soon burst. Evidently the 

 young are hatched in the cool earth and dig their way 

 out. 



AVe continued our walk, and soon came on some kob. 

 At two hundred yards I got a fine buck, though he 

 went a (juarter of a mile. Then, at a himdred and fifty 

 yards, I dropped a straw-coloured Nile hartebeest. 

 Sending in the kob and liartebeest used up all our 

 porters but two, and I mounted the little mule and 

 tin*ned toward camp, having been out three hours. 

 Soon Gouvimali pointed out a big bustard, marching 

 away through the grass a iiundred yards off. I dis- 

 mounted, shot him through the base of the neck, and 

 remounted. Then Kongoni pointed out, some distance 

 ahead, a bushbuck ram, of the harnessed kind found in 

 tliis part of the Nile \ alley. Hastily dismounting, and 

 stealing rapidly from ant-heap to ant-heap, until I was 

 not much over a hundred yards from him, I gave him a 

 fatal shot ; but the bullet was placed a little too far 

 back, and he could still go a considerable distance. So 



