Sporting Trips of a Subaltern 



the hills. This latter was won easily by the 

 oldest camel-man of the lot ; but as it turned out 

 that he had never been seen at the starting-post, 

 but had chopped in halfway, he could not be 

 awarded the prize. 



There were lots of scavenging beasts in these 

 hills, and it was a weird sound to hear the hyenas 

 at night; their laugh runs up and then down 

 rather to my mind like a ship's syren whistle, and 

 ends in a deep chuckling. It used to echo in an 

 extraordinary way in the gorges, and was de- 

 cidedly unpleasant to hear in the dead of night. 



We used to let our hunters sit up in turn over 

 a goat tied just outside the zeriba at night. I 

 preferred putting a bit of meat out, but that only 

 " drew " foxes. Spots never killed a thing. One 

 night a fox came to a piece of meat placed against 

 the thorn fence. Spots had a shot-gun loaded 

 with No. 1 shot pushed through a hole over the 

 meat, and the fox must have been almost brushing 

 against it, nevertheless he managed to miss, and 

 then complained that a gun wouldn't kill a fox ! 

 so I went out myself, and succeeded in breaking 

 both fore legs and nearly blowing the head off the 

 next arrival. The Somali fox, I may mention, is 

 a leggy, ugly beast, more like a jackal. 



While crossing the Jerato pass we heard of 

 a man-eating leopard. He had killed a man a 

 week before, and mauled another since then, the 



