CREATURES OF THE WILDERNESS 199 



sword. In the time of those well-loved 

 Governors of the Sudan, Baker and Gordon, 

 both banks of the Dinder were lined with a 

 continuous succession of villages, the teeming- 

 population of which cultivated broad acres 

 of cotton, corn, and the oil-bearing sesame. 

 These nations had, however, followed the arts 

 of peace, neglecting what Bacon calls 'the 

 most certain oracle of time,' infected with the 

 canker of prosperity, and blind to the necessity 

 of armed combination. As a result, the entire 

 riverine population was wiped out within a few 

 years, so that the acacia stretched its gaunt 

 arms over the ashes of their villages, and the 

 wild elephant trampled underfoot the last grue- 

 some evidences of their downfall. As, more- 

 over, the laws of Mahdiism precluded the use 

 of firearms in hunting, there was a marked 

 increase of wild animals in the Sudan between 

 1883 and 1898, and it was here, in the de- 

 populated area reclaimed by the wilderness, 

 that the sword-hunters found their opportunity. 

 "On the first day out, four wart-hog boars 

 were the reward of an early start. On the 

 second day, the party entered the elephant 

 country and bivouacked, with no other water 

 available than that which was carried in skins 

 on the backs of two camels. Next morning, 

 leaving the camels and a spare horse in bivouac, 

 the hunters set out, leading their horses. There 

 were Ahmet, the veteran lightweight of the 

 Beni Hussein tribe, with his black Galla pony, 

 'Shansun'; then an Arab sheikh, with his smart 

 grey, 'Bishtena'; next, twoAgagir) and myself 



