A FIRST PRIZE OF SUDAN 153 



though keener eyes than mine have detected a deeper, 

 rustier red. 



The Sudan, as before stated, can fairly claim several 

 of Afric's most notable game-beasts as being almost ex- 

 clusively her own endemic. All of these, however (save 

 one), acknowledge relatives not markedly dissimilar and 

 co-existent in adjacent regions of the African Continent, 

 since the water-parting of Nile and Congo forms either a 

 rendezvous of relatives or a centre of dispersal for diverging 



NILE LECHWI, OR SADDLEBACK, IN NORMAL ATTITUDE. 



types of nascent species. Our beautiful subject, the Nilotic 

 lechwi, forms the single exception indicated. It is 

 absolutely loyal to the Nile watershed, never trans- 

 gressing those boundaries ; nor saving only the Zambesi 

 lechwi, 1000 miles to the southward does it acknowledge 

 a single relative, similar or dissimilar, elsewhere in Africa, 

 or in the world. 



Whether within its limits, the Nile lechwi is really 

 abundant, or otherwise, it is difficult to estimate, since 

 no reliable census is available amid ocean-like expanses 

 of reed-jungle and impassable swamp. The consensus of 

 opinion among big-game hunters (many of whom have 

 their own pet resorts carefully located and as carefully kept 



