IX 
KOODOO-STALKING ON G0L1S TANGE 
229 
on but a thin vest, a pair of khaki drill breeches, and red rubber 
tennis-shoes with long stockings, the day having been too hot 
for climbing steep hills in a coat. 
It became intensely cold as the sun set and the rain poured 
down, so employing all our knives we soon whipped off the skin 
of the koodoo, and I threw it over my shivering shoulders like 
a shawl, hair inside. The Somalis had their tobes. We cut off 
the head, and each of us being loaded with head, meat, or rifles, 
made our way over the hills back to camp, arriving an hour 
after dark ; Hassan, who had pointed out the koodoo, being 
privileged to sing the hunting-song as we approached the camp- 
fire. 
During the next six days I went after koodoo morning and 
evening without success, sometimes going up into the mountains 
before dawn and not returning till after nightfall, and shifting 
camp from one watering-place to another. On the sixth day I 
had a long hunt after a koodoo with fine horns, which we had 
got news of in Harka-weina in the Henweina Valley ; we saw 
him across a gorge, and after making a long detour to get into 
a favourable position for a stalk, found that he had mysteriously 
disappeared. 
On the same evening we marched five miles across the 
Henweina Valley, and made our bivouac at the karia of one 
Waiss Mahomed, of the Adan Esa, Esa Musa, Habr Awal. 
The people were kind and attentive, bringing me willingly goats, 
sheep, and milk to buy whenever I wanted supplies. The camp 
was pitched among large, flat-topped gudd thorn-trees hung with 
thick masses of armo creeper, which forms a deep and cool 
shade, and has a light green, heart-shaped leaf, thick and 
rubber-like and full of sap. At a distance of a mile on every 
side of the camp were the foothills of Gobs Range. The spot 
was pleasant, and I resolved to make a halt of several days here, 
looking for koodoo and making up the bundles of specimens 
ready to be enclosed in boxes when I arrived at Aden, and sent 
to London. 
On 12th June I sent out two parties to look for koodoo, and 
waited in camp till 10 a.m. for news from these men, or from 
the Esa Musa cowboys who were herding cattle on the mountains. 
A herd-boy brought in news that he had seen four bull koodoo 
on the top of a mountain, about three miles away, and fifteen 
hundred feet above camp. After a toilsome climb, the day 
being exceptionally hot, the boy led us to a saddle in the hills 
