Clarence’s pleasure in my success was really genuine, and I gave him directions to reserve the head and skin, royally presenting him with all the meat. I could not at first make out why he so vigorously refused it. I made up my mind he had some prejudice against this particular variety of antelope. I afterwards found that no Jew is more particular how his meat is killed than is the Somali. The system of “hallal” is very strictly respected, and it was only occasionally, when I meant the men to have meat, that I was able to stock their larder.
I tasted some of this gerenük, and cooked it myself, Our cook was, indeed, a failure. He was one of the talk-about-himself variety, and from constant assertions that he could cook anything passing well, had come to believe himself a culinary artist.
I roasted a part of the leg of my gerenük, and did it in a way we used to adopt in the wilds of Vancouver Island. A hole is made in the ground and filled with small timber and pieces of wood. This is fired, and then, when the embers are glowing, the meat being ready in a deep tin with a tight-fitting lid, you place it on the hot red ashes, and cover the whole with more burning faggots, which are piled on until the meat is considered to be ready. If the Somalis have a quantity of meat to cook, they make a large trench, fill it with firewood, and make a network of stout faggots, on which the meat is placed. It is a sort of grilling process, and very effective. If kept constantly turned, the result is usually quite appetising.
Cecily came into camp with a Speke buck. I examined it with the greatest interest. The coat feels very soft to the touch, and has almost the appearance of having been oiled. Speke’s Gazelle are very numerous in the Golis, and are dark in colour, with a tiny black tail. They have a very strange protuberance of skin on the nose, of which I have never discovered the use. Every extraordinary feature of wild life seems to me to be there for some reason of protection, or escape, or well being. Dear Nature arranges things so to balance accounts a little ’twixt all the jungle folk. In the Speke fraternity there is more equality of the sexes. The does as well as the bucks carry horns. At first I pretended to Cecily that my expedition had been an humiliating and embarrassing failure, that I had signally missed a shot at a gerenük that would have delighted the heart of a baby in arms. But she caught sight of my trophy impaled on a thorn bush, and dashed over to see it instanter.
About this time we were very much amused to discover we had among our shikaris a veritable Baron Munchausen. Of whatever he told us, the contrary was the fact. If he brought news of splendid “khubbah,” there was no game for miles. If we went spooring, he spoored to the extent of romancing about beasts that could not possibly frequent the region we were in at all. I do not mind a few fibs; in fact, I rather like them.
“A taste exact for faultless fact
Amounts to a disease,”
and argues such a hopeless want of imagination. But this man was too much altogether. Of course he may have had a somewhat perverted sense of humour.
My uncle had warned me I should find all Somalis frightful liars, and to be prepared for it. Personally, I always like to assume that every man is a Washington until I have proved him to be an Ananias.
We saw—in the distance—numerous aoul, Soemmering’s Gazelle, and the exquisitely graceful koodoo, the most beautiful animal, to my thinking, that lives in Somaliland. The horns are magnificent, with the most artistic of curves. The females are hornless in this species also. When come upon suddenly, or when frightened, this animal “barks” exactly as our own red deer are wont to do. In colour they are of a greyish hue, and their sides are striped in lines of white.