96 LIFE WITH THE HAMRAN ARABS. 



was ruminating over a cup of coffee how best to cook 

 him, he managed to right himself and to disappear into 

 the river. 



Jan. 30. The prayer to the dead Sheik still holds 

 good, for Coke and Uncle Sam succeeded in stalking 

 close to some antelope, named goteer by our men, and 

 succeeded in bagging two. One has such a magnificent 

 pair of spiral horns, that it has made the rest of us feel very 

 keen to get a similar specimen for our individual collec- 

 tions. The other was a doe, and without horns. This 

 antelope is found in Southern Africa also, where it is 

 named koodoo, and their horns are even finer than are 

 found here. It is very handsome, standing about thirteen 

 hands high, and has a mouse-grey coloured hide and three 

 white stripes crossing the body vertically. According 

 to Baker, it is also called the nellut. To-day a 

 maariff has been added to the game list by myself. 

 The first shot with an express at about two hundred and 

 fifty yards distance struck the shoulder, and he went off ; 

 but Essafi, seeing that he was lame, jumped on his horse 

 and started off in mad pursuit, and ultimately succeeded 

 in turning him, but in a direction far away from me. 

 Essafi then returned for me, and very soon we were upon 

 his track, with the satisfactory addition of occasional 

 patches of blood. For more than an hour we followed 

 him in this way over hill and dale, sometimes catching a 

 glimpse of him disappearing over the crest of one hill as 



