DINKA INGRATITUDE 213 



by mistake. She was in milk, and I drank some of it. 

 It was such as any other. 



I do not think I have mentioned how we used to 

 indicate to our party that an animal had been shot. 

 If the trophy was worth keeping, the head would be 

 cut off. If not, a joint, or even an ear, would be 

 laid on the path, or hung on the fork of a tree, and 

 a line of leaves show the direction of the kill. Only 

 once was a large joint taken by a beast of prey before 

 my carriers came up to it. 



To get to Sh. Ramadan's we had to go down a 

 sharp ledge of rock. When there I told him that 

 he might send his people to fetch some of the meat 

 I had killed for himself. In true Dinka fashion he did 

 not seem a bit obliged. I begged him not to make 

 a favour of accepting the present, as lions and hyenas 

 would make short work of what my people left. He 

 then sent for it. 



From this place we struck across country for Beit 

 Itman — the village at which I had halted when march- 

 ing from Kossinga to Chakchak. 



Our path led us at first across a bit of country that 

 very much resembled the dried-up bed of a river. 

 The "banks" steep, 20 feet high and 100 yards apart, 

 were, like the putative bed of the stream, covered by 

 trees. 



The Kuru, where we crossed it, was still a series 

 of pools. The right bank was high and wooded, the 

 left a broad plain. The latter was full of game of 

 every sort. It looked like the pictures of a " Sports- 

 man's Paradise," which one sees in old books of 



