DOWN THE NILE; THE GIANT ELAND 461 



dangerous game, as he was. His party had killed two 

 whalebills, one for the British Museum and one for the 

 Congo Museum. They were a male and female who 

 were near their nest, which contained two downy young; 

 these were on M. Solve's boat, where we saw them. The 

 nest was right on the marsh water; the birds had bent the 

 long blades of marsh grass into an interlacing foundation, 

 and on this had piled grass which they had cut with their 

 beaks. These beaks can give a formidable bite, by the 

 way, as one of our sailors found to his cost when he rashly 

 tried to pick up a wounded bird. 



I was anxious to get a ewe of the saddle-back lechwe 

 for the museum, and landed in the late afternoon, on see- 

 ing a herd. The swamp was so deep that it took an hour's 

 very hard and fatiguing wading, forcing oursleves through 

 the rank grass up to our shoulders in water before we got 

 near them. The herd numbered about forty individuals; 

 their broad trail showed where they had come through 

 the swamp, and even through a papyrus bed; but we found 

 them grazing on merely moist ground, where there were 

 ant-hills in the long grass. As I crept up they saw me 

 and greeted me with a chorus of croaking grunts; they 

 are a very noisy buck. I shot a ewe, and away rushed 

 the herd through the long grass, making a noise which 

 could have been heard nearly a mile off, and splashing and 

 bounding through the shallow lagoons; they halted, and 

 again began grunting; and then off they rushed once more. 

 The doe's stomach was filled with tender marsh grass. 

 Meanwhile, Kermit killed, on drier ground, a youngish 

 male of the white-eared kob. 



Next morning we were up at the Bahr el Zeraf. At ten 



