XVI 
EN ROUTE FOR EL BO GO I 
379 
of pelicans and fish-eating fowl of every possible kind, too, 
show these bays to be a great resort of the fishy world of 
Bassu. In the evening the dead bushes in the water are 
simply laden with cormorants, herons, etc. I also observed 
cormorants’ nests containing young on a dead tree in the 
shallow water. 
I continued to hunt almost daily, devoting my attention 
chiefly to zebra, and was pretty successful. In this perfectly 
open country it is by no means easy to get within shot—then 
sometimes a long one. It is often only to be accomplished by 
a long and careful stalk—laborious and trying under a blazing 
sun and over baked bare, stony ground, but rendered the more 
interesting by these very difficulties. Thus, after sighting a 
pair of zebra from a rocky hill, standing motionless in a bare 
valley a couple of miles away, in an apparently unapproachable 
position, and then working one’s way arduously along little 
rough gullies, crawling under partial cover of some slight 
inequality of the ground—watching the while the tips of their 
ears with strained eyes as you wriggle along among the stones 
and the little thorny plants which are almost the only vegeta¬ 
tion the barren ground supports, regardless of the tiny hair-like 
spines penetrating hands and knees—it is satisfactory to attain 
at length the point previously noted as within striking distance, 
and floor both before sufficiently recovered from their alarm at 
the sudden apparition to get out of range. And when an 
experimental incision over the plump, wide quarters, grooved 
like a ripe peach, and as sleek, shows a layer of yellow fat— 
beloved of porters—half an inch or more in thickness, the 
thought of the glee with which your straining men will carry 
in the meat makes the tramp back to camp happy with the 
anticipation of their joyful smiles. Having propped the round 
carcase with stones so as to lie on its back, and tied a flutter¬ 
ing white handkerchief to one of the up-sticking hind feet 1 (for 
there is most likely no stick near), you know it will be safe 
1 As illustrated in the photograph on p. 211. 
