HERE AND THERE THE HEADS OF IMMENSE CROCODILES EMERGED FROM THE STREAM 



XIV 

 Buffaloes and Crocodiles 



IN the autumn of the year 1899 I encamped on the 

 banks of the Pangani River, about midway up its 

 course. My taxidermist and I were busy preserving and 

 packing the zoological specimens we had collected, and 

 for a period of about a fortnight there had been so 

 much work that I had hardly been able to leave the 

 camp. 



For some time I had been sending out reliable scouts 

 to track buffaloes. Since the rinderpest broke out in the 

 Kilimanjaro district these animals had been very scarce, 

 and I was about the first European hunter to visit 

 the unhealthy swamps of the Pangani. For weeks my 

 people had been making fruitless journeys. Nowhere 

 could they find the buffalo-haunts. Suddenly they found, 

 some distance from my camp on the bank of the river, 

 two natives, Waseguhas, who had built themselves a little 

 hut there, and had planted a little field with maize, living 



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