408 SAVAGE SUDAN 



behind the herd. At length, after four days' patience and 

 continuous spooring straight on end, the chance arrived. The 

 quality of the trophy secured, the photo annexed clearly shows. 

 His horns taped 39^ inches straight. 



The operation of skinning presented a quite unexpected 

 difficulty, owing to the intrusion of swarming hordes of highly 

 aggressive bees. The slightest moisture in this arid land 

 attracts bees in millions even such exiguous moisture as 

 exudes from human brow and arm. Upon this great flayed 

 carcase they settled in seething layers, and off-skinning became 

 impossible save under the reek and pungent smoke of half a 

 dozen bonfires of greenwood alighted to windward. Even so, 

 all hands were stung and stung again, and personally I was 

 soon driven to the shelter of a mosquito-net with eyes, mouth, 

 face, and arms swollen and aching with hundreds of poisoned 

 shafts. 



One point to the credit of the ferocious bees we gratefully 

 recall. When in the final days of this venture provisions ran 

 out and rations fell to vanishing point, the bees' nests in hollow 

 trees supplied most acceptable stores of wild honey. 



The results of this expedition Pearson had described at the 

 time in lit,, April 2/th, 1913 : " I had a fairly good time, but 

 should have done better had I not cracked up. Ten days out 

 from Wau 1 was poisoned by the water which was frightfully 

 contaminated by baboons four days of dysentery while on trek, 

 seventeen more in Rumbek = twenty-one in all. Thence to 

 Shambe on the Nile I was carried on the heads of Nyam-Nyam 

 porters 104 miles ; but it is 388 miles in all from Meshra-el- 

 Rek to Shambe. However, I got the giant eland (a topper) 

 and white rhino, besides one elephant and five kinds of antelope 

 that were new to me, making seven new species in all. 



" There are strange and weird creatures in Bahr-el-Ghazal : 

 Balaeniceps plentiful, but weirdest of all a Frenchman whom 

 (with his ? wife) I found in a nuggur right in the middle of 

 the Sudd. He asked me if he was likely to get a lion there ! 

 He had two waterbuck heads quite 12 inches long, two baby 

 tiang, and a vilely smelling croc skin rolled up in a ball. . . . 

 Giraffe are an abominable nuisance in Bahr-el-Ghazal ; the 

 bush is stiff with them, and they are continually going off with 



