ALLEN: MAMMALS FROM THE BLUE NILE VALLEY. 313 
point. At Bados we spent a day hunting the Roan, with a skilful 
native tracker. ‘The animals were well back from the river, and after 
about an hour’s walk we reached their country, and spent some hours 
following tracks on the powdery “cotton soil” in the thorn scrub. 
The tracks were mostly of single animals or pairs, and we found where 
they had roamed about stopping here and there to bite off a green 
twig of a particular species of thorn, white-barked and with small 
obovate leaves. The Antelope were extremely shy and several broke 
away before we had even sighted them. Finally Dr. Phillips success- 
fully stalked to within ninety yards of one lying apparently asleep 
under a ‘laloab’ tree, at noon. But the watchful animal was quick 
to detect the motion of the binoculars, even at that distance and down 
wind, and leaped to its feet, a fine imposing creature. When startled 
at close range, the Roan as it bounds away makes a sound like a 
“sneezing cough.” 
On the Dinder, there are many 1 more than on the Blue Nile. For 
some distance above the villages where the river bank is more or less 
travelled by Arab gum pickers and hunters, the Roan are shy, and 
their tracks, which we began to find at the camping spot, El Kuka, 
usually led straight back into the thorn scrub, so that it was fully a 
mile from the stream before the trails began to break up. Beyond 
the junction of the Galegu we saw many Roan. They had evidently 
been little disturbed here and travelled in bands of as many as fifteen 
to twenty-five, taking no apparent precaution to avoid the river 
borders. Unlike the other antelopes, they seemed to avoid the open 
‘meres’ but were usually in the scattered tree growth, or the edge of 
the tall grass and bushes near the stream. They seemed to browse 
rather than graze. At Abiad several came to water at a pool of the 
Dinder, in mid-afternoon, and it was interesting to see some drop to 
their knees to drink, though others drank standing. 
Owing to its wariness and its habit of retiring far back from the 
travelled river banks, this large species will no doubt continue to 
survive along the Blue Nile for some time longer. Cotton (1912, 
p. 53) believes that they drink only about twice a week, so are able to 
go a long way from water. He says they are still common on the 
Setit and the Atbara Rivers, in the uninhabited portions, but no 
longer exist on the Rahad. 
The stomach of one contained in the first compartment over a 
peck of the small twigs and leaves of a gray-barked thornbush, as well 
as a number of ‘laboab’ fruits, whose large stones are evidently 
masticated with the cud, instead of being regurgitated as with the 
smaller gazelle. 
