IV 
GOVERNMENT EXPLORATIONS 
95 
miles, but it occupied five hours, as the mountain was cut up by 
deep ravines, while the high trees, growing close together and 
festooned with creepers, obstructed the path. At the edge of 
the bluffs are cliffs on every side, and a beautiful jungle with 
a great variety of flowers and plants, especially luxuriant 
maiden-hair fern, and mosses. We struck camp and made for 
the lower plateau, losing ourselves among a network of steep 
ravines, but eventually reached a plain from which stood out a 
rounded rock called Dagah Kaburaleh, and we camped in a 
grassy hollow at its foot. 
Later on we struck south through the khansa jungle to Ber 
in Khansa. E saw a lioness, but she bounded into the 
long grass before he had a chance of getting a shot. Leaving 
him at the Ber camp, I made a reconnaissance into the open 
prairie of Toyo, sleeping out two nights without a tent, and 
shooting for the first time two hartebeests, afterwards described 
by Dr. Sclater as Swayne’s Hartebeest ( Bubalis swaynei). 
Returning to Ber, and finding E gone, I followed in his 
tracks, and halted for the night at a pasture called Tal4wa-yer, 
among the karias of the Kasin Ish&k, Habr Gerhajis. As I was 
riding ahead of the caravan, towards sunset, looking out for a 
dead tree near which to camp, and so save labour in collecting 
firewood, some karia people came running to report that a 
panther had just struck down a goat, and been driven off by the 
herd-boys. 1 ordered the men to pitch camp and walked over 
to the body of the goat. We built a screen of boughs two feet 
high, taking ten minutes over the work, and then, with the 
setting sun scorching our backs, I sat down with my two 
hunters behind the screen, and only five yards from the goat. 
Several men, who had helped us to make the brushwood screen, 
then walked away towards camp, purposely talking aloud to 
lead the brute to suppose we had all gone together ; when they 
were only a hundred yards away I looked towards the goat and 
saw the panther standing over it, his tail towards me. I fired, 
and hit him high on the left side, the bullet raking forward, 
when he rolled over. On looking under the smoke I finished 
him with a second shot as he lay twisting and growling in the 
grass ; and we carried him to camp and skinned him by firelight. 
This was the first panther I bagged, though I had seen many. 
At dawn I continued the march, and arrived at my brother’s 
halting-place before noon. 
We made several marches westward, and on 8th June 
