DOWN THE NILE; THE GIANT ELAND 457 



the white saddle of advanced maturity. His stomach was 

 full of the fine swamp grass. 



These handsome antelopes come next to the situtunga 

 as lovers of water and dwellers in the marshes. They 

 are far more properly to be called "waterbuck" than are 

 the present proprietors of that name, which, like the ordi- 

 nary kob, though liking to be near streams, spend most of 

 their time on dry plains and hill-sides. This saddle-marked 

 antelope of the swamps has the hoofs very long and the 

 whole foot flexible and spreading, so as to help it in passing 

 over wet ground and soft mud; the pasterns behind are 

 largely bare of hair. It seems to be much like the lechwe, a 

 less handsome, but equally water-loving, antelope of south- 

 ern Africa, which is put in the same genus with the water- 

 buck and kob. 



That afternoon Dr. Mearns killed with his Winchester 

 30-40, on the wing, one of the most interesting birds we 

 obtained on our whole trip, the whale-billed stork. It 

 was an old male and its gizzard was full of the remains of 

 small fish. The whalebill is a large wader, blackish-gray 

 in color, slightly crested, with big feet and a huge, swollen 

 bill; a queer-looking bird, with no near kinsfolk, and so 

 interesting that nothing would have persuaded me to try to 

 kill more than the four actually needed for the public 

 (not private) museum to which our collections were going. 

 It is of solitary habits and is found only in certain vast, 

 lonely marshes of tropical Africa, where it is conspicuous 

 by its extraordinary bill, dark coloration, and slug- 

 gishness of conduct, hunting sedately in the muddy shal- 

 lows, or standing motionless for hours, surrounded by reed- 

 beds or by long reaches of quaking and treacherous ooze. 



