OUR JOURNEY UP THE NIGER AND BENUE 25 



large antelope. A long stalk failed to bring me within 300 

 yards of them. ' Bee ' is well pleased with his birds ; he has 

 over fifty choice skins, with some good things among them, 

 he thinks. 



" The Benue scenery has varied little the whole way. 

 The country has been quite flat, with hardly a glimpse even 

 of hills. I should think that the average breadth of water 

 has been a thousand yards, bounded on one side by broad 

 stretches of sand frequented by big jabirus and other stork- 

 like birds, geese and plover and occasionally a crocodile : 

 on the other a steep crumbling mud-bank about 20 ft. high 

 at the present state of the river. If one climb this one gets 

 at once into a narrow belt of wood, which is often too dark 

 for there to be any undergrowth. One can walk for miles 

 sometimes without any worse obstacles than the thick 

 crackling bed of dead leaves that make enough noise to scare 

 away any living thing for miles. Only the innumerable 

 small birds and monkeys seem to have enough curiosity to 

 wait and see w^hat's coming. I often heard the big baboons 

 that seem to keep well in the background ; but Jose got a 

 very fine skin of one which is now drying on the top of the 

 boat's awning. These woods often form our dining-room for 

 afternoon ' chop,' as soon as it is decided to stop for camping, 

 when the tables and chairs are put out under a dark vaulted 

 roof of evergreens. In the meantime the tents are being 

 pitched on the sand-bank below where the temperature in 

 the shade has generally been found to be from 100° to 105°. 

 We find that the sand cools very quickly after sundown and 

 that then our tents are in far the best place for sleeping, 

 as they are more in the way of the currents of air made by 



