96 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
In the Sudan the roan is confined to forest, or at least to 
bush-country, and avoids the open plain. Save when 
merely crossing- intervening- prairie, I cannot recollect 
ever having- seen these antelopes beyond a few hundred 
yards from the nearest covert. 
Roan are more independent of water than any ol 
their local neighbours. I can hardly think they require 
to drink oftener than once a week, possibly twice. It is, 
of course, difficult to prove a negative; but never have 
I seen roan near the river either at dawn or dusk, as 
one sees all the rest. Twice I remember observing 
troops of twenty to thirty striding down in stately single 
file towards the river in mid-afternoon, and once a 
company of seven at 11 a.m. ; and on each occasion their 
gait left the impression that they had come from afar. 
Roan, moreover, are great wanderers, and range inland 
over arid areas that seem incompatible with a necessity 
for drinking daily. 
Usually seen in small companies—two or three up to 
a dozen (though, as mentioned later, I once saw what 
I thought might be a hundred together)—roan are 
decidedly exclusive in social taste. Seldom or never do 
they herd with other species, and when seen in company 
with tiang, it is the latter who have intruded ; at any 
rate, if disturbed, the roan go off at once their own way. 
Despite their frequenting forest and bush—usually 
considered easy stalking - country — roan are always 
distinctly difficult of access. Beyond a doubt they are 
extremely vigilant, and gifted with brilliant eyesight to 
boot; moreover, their great height gives them a command¬ 
ing outlook. 
In writing the foregoing paragraphs I find myself in 
this quandary—that they seem to place me in opposition 
to the recorded experiences of one of our greatest hunters 
and observers, Sir Samuel Baker. 
During a whole year on the Nile Tributaries , Baker 
records (pp. 475 and 484-5) that, “owing to their extreme 
