368 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
was long. The weather was very hot, and almost every 
day there were drenching thunder-storms, and the dews 
were exceedingly heavy, so that Kermit was wet almost all 
the time, although he kept in first-rate health. There were 
not many sable and they were shy. About nine or ten 
o'clock they would stop feeding, and leave their pasture 
grounds of long grass, taking refuge in some grove of trees 
and thick bushes, not coming out again until nearly five 
o'clock. 
On the second day's hunting Juma spied a little band 
of sable just entering a grove. A long and careful stalk 
brought the hunters to the grove, but after reaching it they 
at first saw nothing of the game. Then Kermit caught a 
glimpse of a head, fired, and brought down the beast in 
its tracks. It proved to be a bull, just changing from the 
red to the black coat; the horns were fair—in this northern 
form they never reach the length of those borne by the 
sable bulls of South Africa. He also killed a cow, not fully 
grown. He therefore still needed a full-grown cow, which 
he obtained three days later; this animal when wounded 
was very savage, and tried to charge. 
We now went to Nairobi, where Cuninghame, Tarlton, 
and the three naturalists were already preparing for the 
Uganda trip and shipping the stuff hitherto collected. 
Working like beavers we got everything ready—including 
additions to the Pigskin Library, which included, among 
others, Cervantes, Goethe's ''Faust," Moliere, Pascal, 
Montaigne, St. Simon, Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle," 
and Huxley's "Essays"—and on December i8th started for 
Lake Victoria Nyanza. 
