VOYAGE UP WHITE NILE 
69 
fixed and regular. They draw together into little groups 
for the midday siesta and lie down, often a dozen together, 
under the leafiest shade-tree available. They place no 
sentries and all go to sleep in careless security. 
Besides these minor beauties, there were waterbucks— 
“ Sing-sing,” precisely similar to those already shot in 
British East Africa; also roan. Here I enjoyed my first 
interview at close quarters with two of these latter 
antelopes, and their bulk and imposing carriage left a 
deep impression. The trophies carried by this particular 
pair, however, were completely below my standard and 
I left them unmolested. Another day, in an open glade 
amidst scattered trees, my eye picked up three big red 
beasts and, in fervent hope that they might be tiang—a 
species I had not then seen—I manoeuvred to approach. 
The three presumed strangers, however, proved to be 
old friends, Jackson’s hartebeest or its Sudan equivalent. 
By a curious coincidence this trio happened to be the 
only occurrence of Jackson’s hartebeest that I met with 
in life that year north of the Sudd. 1 
The particular forests which I happened first to 
explore comprised great areas of closely growing saplings 
standing so thickly as to stunt undergrowth. Such 
conditions imply “difficult stalking”—not only from the 
absence of ground-covert, but by reason of a multitude 
of obstructive stems right in the line of fire. This initial 
experience led me to form what subsequently proved an 
exaggerated estimate of the difficulties of forest-stalking 
in the Sudan. The present chapter, however, is not 
specially concerned with the bigger game. They will 
be fully described later, each species separately. 
Large bustards (Eupodotis arabs) frequented these 
woods—apparently they were picking gum off the trunks 
1 Externally, I am unable to recognise either in Jackson’s hartebeest 
or in the roan antelope of Sudan, any visible characteristic sufficiently 
outstanding as to justify—much less to necessitate—their specific differentia¬ 
tion from their cousins further south. All these races in both cases are 
practically identical—each a continuing form of the other. 
