220 
SHOOT A TETEL. 
[chap. VIII. 
dismount I rode my little horse Mouse, and returned 
to the path. My horse Filfil was lost. As a rule, 
hunting during the march should he avoided, and I 
had now paid dearly for the indiscretion. 
I reached the Atabbi river about eighteen miles from 
Obbo. This is a fine perennial stream flowing from 
the Madi mountains towards the west, forming an 
affluent of the Asua river. There was a good ford 
with a hard gravel and rocky bottom, over which the 
horse partly waded and occasionally swam. There 
were fresh tracks of immense herds of elephants with 
which the country abounded, and I heard them trum¬ 
peting in the distance. Ascending rising ground in 
perfectly open prairie on the opposite side of the 
Atabbi, I saw a dense herd of about two hundred ele¬ 
phants—they were about a mile distant and were moving 
slowly through the high grass. Just as I was riding 
along the path watching the immense herd, a Tetel 
(hartebeest) sprang from the grass in which he had 
been concealed, and fortunately he galloped across a 
small open space, where the high grass had been de¬ 
stroyed by the elephants. A quick shot from the little 
Fletcher 24 rifle doubled him up; but, recovering him¬ 
self almost immediately, he was just disappearing, 
when a shot from the left-hand barrel broke his back, 
to the intense delight of my people. We accordingly 
bivouacked for the night, and the fires were soon blazing 
upon a dry plateau of granite rock about seventy feet 
square that I had chosen for a resting place. In the 
saucer-shaped hollows of the rock was good clear water 
from the rain of the preceding day ; thus we had all 
the luxuries that could be desired—fire, food, and 
water. I seldom used a bedstead unless in camp ; thus 
my couch was quickly and simply made upon the hard 
rock, softened by the addition of an armful of green 
boughs, upon which I laid an untanned ox-liide, and 
spread my Scotch plaid. My cap formed my pillow, 
and my handy little Fletcher rifle lay by my side be¬ 
neath the plaid, together with my hunting knife ; these 
