KOSSINGA 143 



I was also grossly misled by a compiled map, which 

 showed the distance between Dem Zubeir and Kos- 

 singa as about fifty-seven miles, whereas it was quite 

 thirty more. I could not make it out. I later saw in a 

 compilation of my sketches a distance of sixty miles cut 

 down to twenty-six ! The paramount importance of em- 

 ploying, in an unmapped country, only those who have 

 acquired the knowledge of " shooting " stars (to do 

 so is the work of a week) is obvious. I shot a water- 

 buck and bush-buck on the road, but except on Christ- 

 mas Day, on which I had decided not to shoot anything, 

 I saw very little. I, of course, looked for the spoor of 

 eland, two of which were got near here some years 

 before, but saw none — neither did an officer who 

 spent days on the road on which I was only hours. 



At a Mandalla village south of Kossinga, the first of 

 Sultan Nasr Andal's envoys met me, and hearing that I 

 intended to march into the " capital " that night, he 

 sent word in to say so. Shortly after my start two 

 bazingers (gun -men) met me, and one of them dashed 

 back the way he had come. This performance was 

 repeated time and again till I met the Sultan himself. 

 He was surrounded, as far as we could see in the dark, 

 by a mass of followers, and accompanied by a bugler, 

 who greeted me with a more than Khedivial salute 

 (the Governor-General's salute twice repeated is that 

 of H.H. the Khedive). In fact, had I not shouted that 

 I wanted to go on he would perhaps be blowing still. 

 As it was, whenever he found breath to do so, he 

 startled the surrounding darkness with his dis- 

 cordant strains. It was about 9 P.M. when I reached 



