XVI EN ROUTE FOR EL BOGOr 379 



of pelicans and fish -eating fowl of every possible kind, too, 

 show these bays to be a great resort of the fishy world of 

 Bassu. In the evening the dead bushes in the water are 

 simply laden with cormorants, herons, etc. I also observed 

 cormorants' nests containing young on a dead tree in the 

 shallow water. 



I continued to hunt almost daily, devoting my attention 

 chiefly to zebra, and was pretty successful. In this perfectly 

 open country it is by no means easy to get within shot — then 

 sometimes a long one. It is often only to be accomplished by 

 a long and careful stalk — laborious and trying under a blazing 

 sun and over baked bare, stony ground, but rendered the more 

 interesting by these very difficulties. Thus, after sighting a 

 pair of zebra from a rocky hill, standing motionless in a bare 

 valley a couple of miles away, in an apparently unapproachable 

 position, and then working one's way arduously along little 

 rough gullies, crawling under partial cover of some slight 

 inequality of the ground — watching the while the tips of their 

 ears with strained eyes as you wriggle along among the stones 

 and the little thorny plants which are almost the only vegeta- 

 tion the barren ground supports, regardless of the tiny hair-like 

 spines penetrating hands and knees — it is satisfactory to attain 

 at length the point previously noted as within striking distance, 

 and floor both before sufficiently recovered from their alarm at 

 the sudden apparition to get out ^of range. And when an 

 experimental incision over the plump, wide quarters, grooved 

 like a ripe peach, and as sleek, shows a layer of yellow fat — 

 beloved of porters — half an inch or more in thickness, the 

 thought of the glee with which your straining men will carry 

 in the meat makes the tramp back to camp happy with the 

 anticipation of their joyful smiles. Having propped the round 

 carcase with stones so as to lie on its back, and tied a flutter- 

 ing white handkerchief to one of the up-sticking hind feet^ (for 

 there is most likely no stick near), you know it will be safe 



^ As illustrated in the photograph on p. 211. 



