6 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
Besides these “exclusive creations,” the Sudan shares 
with other African areas quite an extensive game-list, 
including particularly lion and leopard, buffalo and giraffe, 
roan antelope, koodoo, waterbuck, various hartebeests, 
bushbuck and reedbuck, ibex, ariel, and a variety of gazelles, 
together with wart-hog and many minor kinds of game. 1 
This imposing array notwithstanding, it is right 
nevertheless to add that neither in quantity nor in variety 
of game does Sudan equal the great hunting-fields farther 
south. This employment of a comparison is in no proper 
sense derogatory. The modern hunter has no use for 
quantity: his object is ever the aliquid novi —some new 
acquaintance or trophy. The object is to suggest that 
for those who have time and opportunity for both, it 
would be advisable to take Central and Equatorial Africa 
first, leaving the Sudan for a subsequent effort. But on no 
account should the latter be omitted by one who desires 
a comprehensive insight of the greater African fauna. 
To cite my own case, a preliminary expedition in 
South Africa proved disappointing—that field (in 1899) 
was already played out. Then, after various other 
ventures, the opening of the Uganda railway led me to 
British East Africa, and its teeming wealth of wild-life 
came as a revelation. To that region I am indebted for 
memories as glorious as hunter-naturalist may ever realise 
—or even dream of. Lastly came the Sudan, and I bless 
the guiding star that directed my final steps thither. 
If it be permissible to carry the personal retrospect 
further, another comparison would be appropriate. 
Namely, that between our present subject of African 
hunting and my own antecedent period in Europe, when 
strenuous days and even weeks were spent—say in Spain 
or in Norway—in almost desperate efforts to secure an 
1 Oryx beisa strays over the mountain-plateaux that adjoin the boundaries 
of Eritrea, and in the same region is also found the greater koodoo on the 
Settite and Atbara rivers, and in the hill country along the Abyssinian 
frontier—as well as in Western Kordofan. 
