At sunrise, on 31st August, I broke up the Karanleh camp and marched through some five miles of jowári plantations, near the south bank of the river, to Yahia’s village, where I shot a noted man-eating crocodile. These hideous pests swarm here; once I shot a wild goose, which, falling into the stream, was at once seized by a crocodile and drawn under while still struggling. In the evening we made another march to a spot near the river where we had been told to expect a school of hippopotami, and I shot two good waterbuck bulls on the way there. We saw fresh tracks of the hippos in the reeds, and I sat up by moonlight in the jungle overlooking them, hoping to bag one as it came to feed on shore. But at 4 A.M., finding nothing stirring in the reeds, we gave it up and returned to camp by moonlight. The Gilimiss, our guide, said that the hippopotami were scarce and wary, as the Adone negroes, during a recent famine, when nearly all their cattle had died of disease, had killed hippopotami for food, and had greatly reduced their numbers.
The great epidemic of cattle disease which three or four years ago raged in Masailand, and other parts of East Africa was also felt in Ogádén, the cattle and the koodoo antelopes dying of it in large numbers. It was felt as far north as the Marar Prairie.
We made a morning march on 1st September, and another in the evening. While passing over ground blackened by fire, and covered with young grass, I shot a buck Sœmmering’s gazelle and a waterbuck. At dusk, coming to dense forest by the river, I ordered the men to pitch camp at the edge, and entering the jungle unattended, I saw a red object standing motionless near the stem of a large tree twenty yards away. I felt certain it was an antelope, but was unable to make it out in the half light. I put up the rifle and fired, when the animal rushed past me and fell in a ravine close by, rolling over on its side; and on going up to it, I found, to my delight, it was a young buck of the dól, or striped and spotted Webbe bushbuck, which I had been so anxious to get. Going into camp to call up the men, I shot a buck lesser koodoo. As the forest appeared to have plenty of game in it I resolved to halt for a day’s shooting. The camp was in a very pleasant place, at the corner of a patch of forest looking down on the river from the edge of a steep bank.
Next day at dawn I went out and soon came upon a waterbuck. We had been making for a wide glade of fresh grass, and on emerging from the forest we caught sight of him going up a bank two hundred yards away. I fired, and we ran to the spot, but his tracks leading away without any sign of blood, I knew I had missed. He took us through several very thick patches of bush, the game paths sometimes forming tunnels four feet high in the vegetation; and at last, the light appearing ahead, we forced our way through a thicket and found ourselves unexpectedly on the very verge of the Webbe, a few yards from the water’s edge.
Waterbuck swimming
Directly we showed our heads outside the jungle my man Géli pushed me back and pointed out into the centre of the stream, which lay before us, flowing deep and swift, a hundred yards broad; out in the middle appeared the head and horns of the noble waterbuck swimming for the opposite shore. It was too good a prize to lose, so, waiting till he shook the water from his flanks and cantered up the slope of stiff mud, I fired, and striking him behind the withers brought him down; and then another shot finished him. In his struggles he had slipped down the bank to within six feet of the water, and I was in a great fright lest after all his splendid head should go to the crocodiles. We ran the three miles back to camp along the margin of the water, and on reaching it I set all the men to work, cutting down the trunks of dead dry trees to form a raft, and by the afternoon it was ready.
Géli and a Gilimiss guide then poled themselves across the river, and after three hours they returned with the head. I was so anxious to measure it that I shouted to Géli to place the horn against his Snider rifle, while I marked another Snider which my men handed to me, and found that the buck’s horns could not measure much less than twenty-four inches, a large pair for the Webbe, where waterbuck horns are comparatively short. I anxiously watched the men come over with my specimen, and then I carried it to my tent. At night we had several alarms, caused by hyænas and lions, the camels rising suddenly together, running about camp, and stumbling over tent-ropes in the dark. I remained several days hunting waterbuck with great success.
While we were encamped here Adan Yusuf’s horse met with his death in rather a melancholy way. At noon the men were lying under shady trees round camp, sleeping like hogs, and I sat in my tent writing up my journal. The camels were a mile away, browsing under the care of one man, and the horse and Rás Makunan’s mule were hobbled by tying the near fore and near hind leg together, according to Somáli custom. The three milch goats and the horse and mule were allowed to wander about near camp, the man who usually looked after them, thinking I had gone to sleep, having retired to the shade of a tree to do likewise.