STALKING AN OSTRICH, 103 our water-barrels down to the wells we had dug in the Mareb, filling them and taking them back to camp ; in fact, we became the best of friends.

On the same day that Colvin shot the buffalo, William and I had a most exciting stalk after an ostrich. It was a fine black cock, and none of us had ever seen one of these birds in its wild state before. We had gone a long way from the Mareb ; and on ascending a small hill, in order to get a good view of the surrounding country, we suddenly discovered the ostrich. It is at all times an exceedingly difficult bird to approach, generally keeping to the open, and being always on the look-out for danger. The ostrich is supposed by the natives to be deficient in the senses of hearing and smelling, but to have abnormal powers of sight. The one we saw was by no means an exception to the rule ; it was marching about in a great open plain, covered with very fine dried grass not more than two feet high. To stalk it was next to impossible, owing to the almost total absence of covert ; however, we were most anxious to do our best, an ostrich being a prize one did not get the chance of obtaining every day.

For two mortal hours we crouched and crawled, and wriggled ourselves along the grass like eels, during the very hottest part of a roasting-hot day ; once or twice we stopped to rest for a few moments under a hegleek-trQC. There was only an odd tree or two in the grass, which we kept endeavouring to make use of as screens between ourselves and the ostrich. On crawling near the tree in hopes of finding the game within shot on the far side, we discovered that we were no nearer to the object of our pursuit, as the ostrich had walked on all the time, and was probably farther than ever from us. At last, finding it hopeless to get at it in the open, we endeavoured to drive it towards a clump of trees to our left ; all to no purpose, as it was well on