DISASTER 87 



developed, but burnt another three dozen thai 

 were being dried. Within a minute I had lost 

 the work of weeks, and probably the finest photo 

 records of big game I have ever taken ; but such 

 mishaps all come in the game, and this is the third 

 time in twenty years that I have lost in a moment 

 the work of an expedition. Once in little Thibet 

 my plates fell down a precipice ; one box of films 

 lies in the bed of a Central African river, upset from 

 a canoe ; but there are not even ashes left of my 

 Angola films. 



One of my reasons for approaching the sable 

 country from Loanda by the northern railway 

 to Melanje and the north, instead of from Lobito, 

 the central railway, and the south, had been to 

 map out the distribution of the sable antelope. 

 To this end I had. made a series of traverses, or 

 oblique zigzags, across the Loando-Coanza water- 

 shed. These had commenced from its northern 

 end, starting from the Loando River, and would 

 take me to the southern limit of the sable country. 



The first traverse started from the Loando 

 and the most northern point of the watershed, and 

 took me through a fair sable country to a point 

 40 miles to the south, where the Longoe flowed into 

 the Coanza. (See Map at end of book.) 



The second traverse followed up the valley of 

 the Longoe, which ran roughly south-east to its 

 source near the Loando River. This second tra- 

 verse, where sable were very scarce, w r as broken 

 off at a place called Cumimmga, and not completed, 

 as information was obtained that a few sable 

 would be met with right up to the Loando. 



