DOWN THE NILE; THE GIANT ELAND 461 
dangerous game, as he was. His party had killed two 
whalebills, one for the British Museum and one for the 
Congo Museum. They were a male and female who 
were near their nest, which contained two downy young; 
these were on M. Solve’s boat, where we saw them. The 
nest was right on the marsh water; the birds had bent the 
long blades of marsh grass into an interlacing foundation, 
and on this had piled grass which they had cut with their 
beaks. These beaks can give a formidable bite, by the 
way, as one of our sailors found to his cost when he rashly 
tried to pick up a wounded bird. 
I was anxious to get a ewe of the saddle-back lechwe 
for the museum, and landed in the late afternoon, on see¬ 
ing a herd. The swamp was so deep that it took an hour’s 
very hard and fatiguing wading, forcing oursleves through 
the rank grass up to our shoulders in water before we got 
near them. The herd numbered about forty individuals; 
their broad trail showed where they had come through 
the swamp, and even through a papyrus bed; but we found 
them grazing on merely moist ground, where there were 
ant-hills in the long grass. As I crept up they saw me 
and greeted me with a chorus of croaking grunts; they 
are a very noisy buck. I shot a ewe, and away rushed 
the herd through the long grass, making a noise which 
could have been heard nearly a mile off, and splashing and 
bounding through the shallow lagoons; they halted, and 
again began grunting; and then off they rushed once more. 
The doe’s stomach was filled with tender marsh grass. 
Meanwhile, Kermit killed, on drier ground, a youngish 
male of the white-eared kob. 
Next morning we were up at the Bahr el Zeraf. At ten 
