CHAPTER XV 
WILD MEN AND WILD BEASTS 
Of the savage tribes amongst whom we sojourned on 
the Upper Nile—to wit, the Shilluks, Dinkas, and Nuers 
—every man is a born and inveterate hunter; and an 
indiscriminate massacre of game (regardless of season, 
size, or sex) rages daily in those regions on a scale which 
took us entirely by surprise. 
All these tribes, moreover, seem expressly built and 
engined by Nature for the chase. Taller in stature than 
any European race, light and wiry in frame, with long 
lithe limbs and a sinewy muscular development kept 
constantly on full stretch by strenuous open-air life, each 
savage is practically an agile athlete in full training. 
Herdsmen by profession, cultivating but little, and 
largely dependent for grain upon the dhows of Arab 
traders with whom they carry on a sort of truck-trade 
(exchanging ivory, feathers, skins, and gum for wire and 
dhurra), their main subsistence is on the milk and blood 
of their herds. The latter fluid they “tap” at intervals. 
Naturally that repulsive operation cannot be availed 
often: during the intervening periods, the savage looks 
to the wild game. 
It must read incredible that human beings, however 
agile and physically adapted thereto, can conceivably 
run down and kill by spear big and powerful wild animals 
so alert and fleet of foot as waterbuck, hartebeest, roan, 
tiang —to say nothing of such smaller game as cob, 
reedbuck, and the like. Yet they do so daily, and in 
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