THE LADY BABOON 
77 
me half upright on three legs, holding out her hand, and making 
use of expressions doubtless of the most amiable and endearing 
nature, but to my untutored ears sounding only like ‘ Ngo nga, 
ngo nga.’ Shortly a male joined her, and he also, to my surprise, 
with outstretched hand began to ‘ ngo nga, ngo nga,’ while the 
whole troop stared at me in amiable surprise. The position was 
ludicrous in the extreme. ‘ Ngo nga,’ I could not understand ; 
and fearing to excite these ferocious beasts to enmity by any 
demonstration on my part, although uncontrollably desirous 
to sit down and have a friendly chat, I quietly edged off to 
the river, prepared to dive for it in case of necessity. But my 
amiable hosts seemed regretfully to understand that there was a 
difference between us, luckily not of a character requiring 
corporeal vindication, and so dropped behind; while I, who 
had possibly missed a chance of being ‘ King of all the Baboons,’ 
went on and shot the largest koodoo it ever has been my luck 
to encounter, with beautiful spiral horns, which I regret to this 
day had to be left behind, as had all the skins and heads we 
shot on this trip, owing to want of means to transport them. 
Still we consoled ourselves with the fact that koodoo marrow 
spread on slices of broiled liver is also a worthy component 
part of a koodoo’s anatomy, although the marrow has a tendency 
to harden on the palate, an experience not forgotten in con¬ 
nection with plum-pudding of the boarding-school kind in 
our early days. 
Where the winding river channel approaches the bank, we 
found the water extremely deep, though clear, often over forty 
feet, and of a dark-brown colour. This river would be navig¬ 
able for large craft along its winding channels if the openings 
in the reeds were only properly laid out, thus giving water 
communication in the interior from the Victoria falls up to 
where the last falls are formed by the Chobe leaving the hills 
from the west, a distance of several hundred miles, and also 
permitting access to the Okavango river for shallow craft at 
a point to be described later, where the two rivers are connected 
by a four foot deep channel at certain seasons of the year, pro- 
