520 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



up to the bank at nightfall, sometimes steaming steadily 

 through the night. We reached the Sud, the vast papyrus 

 marsh once so formidable a barrier to all who would jour- 

 ney along the river; and sunrise and sunset were beauti- 

 ful over the endless, melancholy stretches of water reeds. 

 In the Sud the only tree seen was the water-loving am- 

 batch, light as cork. Occasionally we saw hippos and croc- 

 odiles and a few water birds; and now and then passed 

 native villages, the tall, lean men and women stark naked, 

 and their bodies daubed with mud, grease, and ashes to 

 keep off the mosquitoes. 



On March 4th we were steaming slowly along the 

 reedy, water-soaked shores of Lake No, keeping a sharp 

 lookout for the white-eared kob and especially for the 

 handsome saddle-marked lechwe kob which has been 

 cursed with the foolishly inappropriate name of "Mrs. 

 Gray's waterbuck." 



Early in the morning we saw a herd of these saddle- 

 marked lechwe in the long marsh grass and pushed the 

 steamer's nose as near to the shore as possible. Then 

 Cuninghame, keen-eyed Kongoni, and I started for what 

 proved to be a five hours' tramp. The walking was hard; 

 sometimes we were on dry land, but more often in water 

 up to our ankles or knees, and occasionally floundering 

 and wallowing up to our hips through stretches of reeds, 

 water-lilies, green water, and foul black slime. Yet there 

 were ant-hills in the marsh. Once or twice we caught a 

 glimpse of the game in small patches of open ground cov- 

 ered with short grass; but almost always they kept to the 

 high grass and reeds. There were with the herd two very 

 old bucks, with a white saddle-shaped patch on the withers, 

 the white extending up the back of the neck to the head; 

 a mark of their being in full maturity, or past it, for on 

 some of the males, at least, this coloration only begins to 

 appear when they seem already to have attained their 

 growth of horn and body, their teeth showing them to be 

 five or six years old, while they are obviously in the prime 



