502 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



unprotected until daylight. On another occasion, where a 

 steamboat was moored close to a bank, an ant column 

 entered the boat after nightfall, and kept complete posses- 

 sion of it for forty-eight hours. Fires, and boiling water, 

 offer the only effectual means of resistance. The bees are 

 at times as formidable; when their nests are disturbed they 

 will attack every one in sight, driving all the crew of a boat 

 overboard or scattering a safari, and not infrequently kill- 

 ing men and beasts of burden that are unable to reach 

 some place of safety. 



The last afternoon, when the flotilla had called to take 

 us farther on our journey, we shot about a dozen buck, to 

 give the porters and sailors a feast, which they had amply 

 earned. All the meat did not get into camp until after 

 dark one of the sailors, unfortunately, falling out of a 

 tree and breaking his neck on the way in and it was 

 picturesque to see the rows of big antelope hartebeest, 

 kob, waterbuck stretched in front of the flaring fires, 

 and the dark faces of the waiting negroes, each deputed by 

 some particular group of gun-bearers, porters, or sailors 

 to bring back its share. 



Next morning we embarked, and steamed and drifted 

 down the Nile; ourselves, our men, our belongings, and 

 the spoils of the chase all huddled together under the torrid 

 sun. Two or three times we grounded on sand bars; but 

 no damage was done, and in twenty-six hours we reached 

 Nimule. We were no longer in healthy East Africa. Ker- 

 mit and I had been in robust health throughout the time 

 we were in Uganda and the Lado; but all the other white 

 men of the party had suffered more or less from dysentery, 

 fever, and sun prostration while in the Lado; some of the 

 gun-bearers had been down with fever, one of them dying 

 while we were in Uganda; and four of the porters who had 

 marched from Koba to Nimule had died of dysentery 

 they were burying one when we arrived. 



At Nimule we were as usual greeted with hospitable 

 heartiness by the English officials, as well as by two or 



