230 
THROUGH SOMALILAND AND ABYSSINIA chap. 
where he had last seen the four bulls ; and as he took us with 
the wind by mistake, we only heard the rattle of stones as the 
game galloped away ; we found their tracks, but never came up 
with them. Much disappointed, we descended by the most 
stony goat-track I remember to have traversed at any time, and 
arrived in camp much done up. 
I had just thrown myself on my camel-mats to rest when 
Geli and Hassan came in triumphantly with news of another 
bull in the opposite direction, about two miles away, and not 
more than five hundred feet above our camp. They had seen 
him quietly walking over the top of a hill, picking here and 
there at the bushes, and without waiting to find out where he 
had gone, they rushed to camp to see whether I had returned 
from the other four bulls. I thought no more of rest, and trotted 
up the valley with my men, by sheep-paths winding through the 
thick undergrowth of aloes, and gained the base of the hill 
where the koodoo had been seen. There was not much time to 
be lost in searching for his tracks, as it was now half-past five, 
and the sun was nearly setting ; so having lost them on stony 
ground near where he had last been seen, we went in different 
directions to search, Geli and Hassan running about on top of 
the hill, and I waiting below under a screen of armo creeper 
which hung from a gudd thorn-tree. After a long wait Geli 
and Hassan could be seen coming cautiously towards me down 
a spur of the hill close to a densely- wooded ravine, which ran 
parallel to the spur on my left. Gaining the level of the valley, 
and creeping from one thicket to another between the aloes, 
they at length reached me and pointed to a dense clump of 
bushes which grew half-way up the ravine, two hundred feet 
above. We made a circuitous stalk by a long detour to the 
right, and so round the top of the hill on the farther side, and 
down over the head of the ravine ; but this took so long that 
when we stalked in on the clump of bushes from above, the 
koodoo was no longer there, the tracks showing that he had 
grazed away downhill. 
As we looked down the ravine we saw that to our right the 
valley fell from the level of my former watching-place into a 
Y-shaped gorge, running at right angles to the ravine. Creeping 
round the shoulder of the hill to the right, so as to be just 
above this gorge, we descended yard by yard, placing each foot 
carefully on the rocks and undergrowth so as to avoid making 
the slightest sound. The wind was in our faces as we advanced, 
