230 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
accompanying- sketch from life. This seemed to shock 
Barakas Mohammedan susceptibilities, and the interesting 
interview terminated all too soon—but leaving quite a 
pleasant memory! 
To resume the narrative :—We were now accompanied 
by half the villagers ; but these savages, not appreciating 
the glories of birds’-nesting or of Tomtit-shooting, ever 
had something bigger (and more eatable) in their minds. 
They yearned for big-game, yet all they could show 
me in a long mornings ramble were two 
bushbuck does (one followed by a fawn). 
I also saw, far out in waist-deep grass, 
the horns of a sleeping waterbuck; so 
sound was his repose that I actually 
walked up to within 50 yards. I did 
this purely for my own amusement, as 
his was a poor little 24-inch head ; but 
that again was not understood of the 
people. 
In an opening among this grass, I 
shot a snake, si feet long, a mamba. 
Mahomed Maghazi’s terror of snakes 
and of all that is unseen was a recurrent 
amusement. To do that excellent Sudani 
justice, I should add that he had “signed on” solely as 
dragoman, and in taking him into the bush at all, I was 
taking him entirely outside his proper sphere and into 
ceaseless alarms. To-day he had implored me not to enter 
the long grass. “Why, Mahomed?” “Oh, that very 
bad grass; no Shilluk go in there; grass very bad—- 
full of lion, leopard, snake!” “But, Mahomed, that’s 
just what we want. You take these natives, go round 
by those far trees, and drive out a few lions and leopards.” 
Poor Mahomed turned chocolate-green at the prospect. 
As a matter of fact, one sees very very few snakes in 
the Sudan. 
One day Mahomed declared he had been attacked 
My Shilluk Belle. 
