408 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
behind the herd. At length, after four days’ patience and 
continuous spooring straight on end, the chance arrived. The 
quality of the trophy secured, the photo annexed clearly shows. 
His horns taped 39J inches straight. 
The operation of skinning presented a quite unexpected 
difficulty, owing to the intrusion of swarming hordes of highly 
aggressive bees. The slightest moisture in this arid land 
attracts bees in millions—even such exiguous moisture as 
exudes from human brow and arm. Upon this great flayed 
carcase they settled in seething layers, and off-skinning became 
impossible save under the reek and pungent smoke of half a 
dozen bonfires of greenwood alighted to windward. Even so, 
all hands were stung and stung again, and personally I was 
soon driven to the shelter of a mosquito-net with eyes, mouth, 
face, and arms swollen and aching with hundreds of poisoned 
shafts. 
One point to the credit of the ferocious bees we gratefully 
recall. When in the final days of this venture provisions ran 
out and rations fell to vanishing point, the bees’ nests in hollow 
trees supplied most acceptable stores of wild honey. 
The results of this expedition Pearson had described at the 
time in lit. y April 27th, 1913 :—“ I had a fairly good time, but 
should have done better had I not cracked up. Ten days out 
from Wau 1 was poisoned by the water which was frightfully 
contaminated by baboons—four days of dysentery while on trek, 
seventeen more in Rumbek = twenty-one in all. Thence to 
Shambe on the Nile I was carried on the heads of Nyam-Nyam 
porters—104 miles ; but it is 388 miles in all from Meshra-el- 
Rek to Shambe. Plowever, I got the giant eland (a topper) 
and white rhino, besides one elephant and five kinds of antelope 
that were new to me, making seven new species in all. 
“ There are strange and weird creatures in Bahr-el-Ghazal: 
Balaeniceps plentiful, but weirdest of all a Frenchman whom 
(with his ? wife) I found in a nuggur right in the middle of 
the Sudd. He asked me if he was likely to get a lion there! 
He had two waterbuck heads quite 12 inches long, two baby 
tiang, and a vilely smelling croc skin rolled up in a ball. . . . 
Giraffe are an abominable nuisance in Bahr-el-Ghazal; the 
bush is stiff with them, and they are continually going off with 
