THE DESERTS , 33 



the best recorded Sudan head was killed by Mr A. L. 

 Butler, who now gives me the following" most interesting 

 note : 



"The villagers at the Shabluka Gorge told me that 

 when, in 1898, the Emir Mahmud passed the Shabluka on 

 his march down the river to meet and give battle to Lord 

 Kitchener's advancing force, he spread out his army of 

 some 10,000 men right across these hills and 'drove' 

 them from the southern to the northern end (about 12 

 miles), with the special object of rounding-up the wild- 

 sheep that inhabited them. In the massacre that ensued 

 at the northern limit of the range, forty-eight sheep were 

 speared, a few only breaking back. A visit to the scene 

 of slaughter resulted in my finding, after some search, a 

 single horn of a good ram which I still keep as a trophy 

 of Mahmud's last hunt." (A few weeks later, on April 

 8th, 1898, the Dervish army was annihilated on the 

 Atbara and Mahmud made a prisoner of war.) 



Mr Butler adds that on the same occasion he spent 

 two days in searching for any sheep that might survive. 

 On the afternoon of the second day he fell in with a herd 

 of thirteen, all small with the exception of a single old 

 ram, which he shot. Its horns measured 26 inches on 

 the curve, 13 inches in circumference at base, and 24 

 inches in spread. 



These wild-sheep at Shabluka are very considerably 

 south of any previously recorded range. 



Then, on the eastern desert-plateaux, towards the Red 

 Sea littoral, roam little bands of the Nubian wild-ass, 

 commencing from near Sarrowit where we saw them, but 

 becoming more plentiful further south, in Eritrea, etc. 

 big upstanding beasts, French-grey in colour, with stiff 

 black manes, a conspicuous white muzzle and black 

 shoulder-stripe. Wild-asses can hardly be counted as 

 "game," and are entirely protected bylaw: at the same 

 time I should have liked to handle one specimen. 



