THE OKAVANGO RIVER 87 



the Ovambos : it was as bad as returning to the 

 pavilion after being out for a duck. However, 

 the luck changed, and the white man's shooting 

 reputation was cleared by my very luckily killing 

 stone dead a big old solitary wildebeeste bull at 

 300 yards. It seems to me that the blue wilde- 

 beeste (or gnu), if not quite a true bison himself, 

 must yet have a very close relative in the American 

 buffalo or European aurochs. 



Surface water was very scarce on the way across 

 to the Luiyanna, in fact we only struck open pools 

 in three places ; but by digging down about five feet 

 we could get plenty of water in the beds of the big 

 dried vleys, and by making a small trough with 

 an oil sheet we had no difficulty in watering all 

 our stock. 



Near one of our camps I found the remains of a 

 splendid bull koodoo who had been killed by a 

 pack of four or five lions. The lions had been 

 drinking at a small claypan close to their kill, but 

 had apparently not found the water in the little 

 pool where we had our camp, for they had 

 travelled on when the claypan went dry. If the 

 koodoo had been found three or four days earlier 

 when freshly killed, there would have been a good 

 chance to get a shot at a Hon, for lion spoor was 

 all over the place. The koodoo's horns, a very 

 big pair, I kept as a memento. A German down 

 in the colony had told me of some place in these 

 districts where all the native huts have to be built 

 in the trees, so greatly do the inhabitants fear the 



