190 SAVAGE SUDAN 



endeavouring to perfect an acquaintance both with the 

 big bovines and numerous other co-tenants. 



The buffalo is nowadays (and probably always was, 

 more or less) practically nocturnal in habit, both feeding 

 and drinking exclusively by night. That, in all my ex- 

 perience, is his nature, though I am far from dogmatising 

 about regions where I have never been and where good 

 observers may have recorded a different habit. Twice 

 during my first voyage in 1912-13, being on deck before 

 dawn, I enjoyed seeing herds by the riverside. Some 

 stood drinking, knee-deep; others wallowed in the shallows, 

 while in each case stood sentries, watching and warning 

 from the dark bank above. 



Leaving their watering-places before it is light, buffaloes, 

 throughout the regular "game-country" of White Nile, 

 usually wander far inland before lying-up for the day, and 

 for their siesta select dense cane-brakes or thorn-thickets. 

 These, however, are presumably modern habits induced 

 by exigencies of safety rather than the normal inherent 

 disposition of the beast. For the buffalo massive, 

 ponderous, and short of limb is not by choice a traveller. 

 This trait is clearly perceptible should one enjoy the 

 extreme good fortune to study buffalo, as we did here, 

 in regions remote, unharassed by hunters. Here, in the 

 simplicity of forests yet undisturbed, the Gamoos rarely 

 troubles to travel a league inland often not a mile 

 and then (this was a surprise to me) eschews thorn- 

 thicket and selects for his siesta some little "clearing," 

 bare of grass but where a grove of thickly-growing trees 

 affords shade and shelter from the sun above. There were 

 many such "stands" in our Hunters' Eden, and all were so 

 selected or formed? Though for half an acre or so the 

 chosen spot was naked of grass, yet immediately around 

 grew bush and jungle in plenty. That the buffalo-herds 

 habitually, year in and year out, spend somnolent days 

 at these selected "stands" and probably had done so 

 for ages was abundantly evidenced ; some of them 



