436 THE GIANT ELAND [ch. xv 
Colonel Owen, Slatin Pasha, and Butler Bey—treated 
us with a courtesy of which I cannot too strongly 
express my appreciation. In the boat we were to have 
met an old friend and fellow-countryman, Leigh Hunt. 
To our great regret, he could not meet us, but he insisted 
on treating us as his guests, and on our way down the 
Nile we felt as if we were on the most comfortable 
kind of yachting trip; and everything was done for us 
by Captain Middleton, the Scottish engineer in charge. 
Nor was our debt only to British officials and to 
American friends. At Gondokoro I was met by 
M. Banquet, the Belgian Commandant of the Lado 
district, and both he and M. Massart, the Chef de 
Poste at Redjaf, were kindness itself, and aided us in 
every way. 
From Gondokoro Kermit and I crossed to Redjaf, for 
an eight days’ trip after the largest and handsomest, and 
one of the least known, of African antelopes—the 
giant eland. We went alone, because all the other 
white men of the party were down with dysentery or 
fever. We had with us sixty Uganda porters, and a 
dozen mules sent us by the Sirdar, together with a 
couple of our little riding mules, which we used now 
and then for a couple of hours on safari, or in getting 
to the actual hunting-ground. As always when only 
one or two of us went, or when the safari was short, we 
travelled light, with no dining-tent, and nothing unneces¬ 
sary in the way of baggage ; the only impedimenta 
which we could not reduce were those connected with 
the preservation of the skins of the big animals, which, 
of course, were throughout our whole trip what neces¬ 
sitated the use of the bulk of the porters and other 
means of transportation employed. 
From the neat little station of Redjaf, lying at the 
