CHAPTER XV 



WILD MEN AND WILD BEASTS 



OF the savage tribes amongst whom we sojourned on 

 the Upper Nile to wit, the Shilluks, Dinkas, and Nuers 

 every man is a born and inveterate hunter ; and an 

 indiscriminate massacre of game (regardless of season, 

 size, or sex) rages daily in those regions on a scale which 

 took us entirely by surprise. 



All these tribes, moreover, seem expressly built and 

 engined by Nature for the chase. Taller in stature than 

 any European race, light and wiry in frame, with long 

 lithe limbs and a sinewy muscular development kept 

 constantly on full stretch by strenuous open-air life, each 

 savage is practically an agile athlete in full training. 



Herdsmen by profession, cultivating but little, and 

 largely dependent for grain upon the dhows of Arab 

 traders with whom they carry on a sort of truck-trade 

 (exchanging ivory, feathers, skins, and gum for wire and 

 dhurra), their main subsistence is on the milk and blood 

 of their herds. The latter fluid they "tap" at intervals. 

 Naturally that repulsive operation cannot be availed 

 often : during the intervening periods, the savage looks 

 to the wild game. 



It must read incredible that human beings, however 

 agile and physically adapted thereto, can conceivably 

 run down and kill by spear big and powerful wild animal's 

 so alert and fleet of foot as waterbuck, hartebeest, roan, 

 tiang to say nothing of such smaller game as cob, 

 reedbuck, and the like. Yet they do so daily, and in 



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