342 
GIRAFFE — CROCODILE'S EGGS. 
giraffe, eland, pig, the white-eared antelope of Peth- 
erick, and other smaller fauna, were observed. The 
natives would not eat the rhinoceros. Giraffe were 
numerous, but very wild, they being in open cover, over 
which they could, by means of their long necks, see 
the sportsman. Nothing is more handsome than their 
bright-yellow black-spotted skin when seen shining 
in the morning sun ; but as you approach to shooting 
distance they canter away like camels and lash their 
sides with their tails. Grnamaera or hartebeest are 
also most provoking animals to stalk ; they allow 
you to approach within three or four hundred yards, 
when they wheel round with a whisk of their tails, 
take a canter, and turn back to look at you. The 
Turks shot a crocodile, and carried him into camp to 
extract his teeth, which are used by the natives of 
Madi as necklaces. They are like the long incisors 
of a sheep, and being pierced, are strung to be worn 
on the neck. Most of the Turks ate of the croco- 
dile, but our Zanzibar men regarded it with disgust. 
We ate their eggs to breakfast ; and although they 
were sweet and good without any particular flavour, 
we had no desire to try another. Ninety -nine of 
them had been found buried a foot under ground in 
the sandy bed of a stream, all laid in very neat order. 
They were longer and larger than the eggs of a turkey, 
pure white, and uniformly shaped at both ends, with 
one-third of them an air-chamber. 
The stream below the village of Apuddo, where we 
encamped for several days, had cut a wide channel 
through the plain. Observing some shining scales on 
its sandy shore, they so much resembled gold that I 
thought I had made a discovery, and washed the sand 
