RENK AGAIN 117 



reports of previous explorers, and no interpreter but 

 what I could get myself, 100 miles north of where I 

 might want him ! Neither was I given a single 

 present with which to conciliate the sheikhs and 

 establish such relations that would have rendered 

 approach by other routes easy. This expedition 

 must have cost the Sudan Government several 

 hundred pounds. 



On this trip I had to shoot a giraffe, when all our 

 meat on board was done. It was poor sport, though 

 I must say that this fellow gave me a long stalk, prob- 

 ably owing to the length of the grass, 4 feet (not as 

 long, it will be remarked, as near the Sobat). The 

 smell of the skin, which I kept, remained hanging to 

 the boat for weeks. 



I found when I reached Fashoda that I had just 

 missed the mail-boat for the north, so was kept for ten 

 days moving up and down the river, unable to leave 

 the steamer, which was carrying wood to the places 

 where building operations, &c., were to be started at 

 the end of the rains. In this way I found myself 

 a good way down the Bahr el Zeraf, which appeared 

 to be a fine stream. 



When I at last got back to Renk, it was to the 

 same existence — fighting mosquitoes, and no work 

 to do. 



The people about were so-called " refugees " — the 

 riff-raff of Omdurman — who were being given, in 

 stages, a free passage back to the districts whence, 

 as children, they had been carried off by the slave- 

 traders. One day a couple of Shilluks arrived in a 



