174 A FRESH SUPPLY OF DHURRA.

faint an impression as often to be entirely invisible to the uneducated eye. They were just on the point of giving up the chase, as the sun was at its height, and they had been tracking for five hours, when they were suddenly confronted by the wounded buffalo ; it turned to charge, when one of them dropped it by a lucky shot in the forehead. When first hit, the ball had caught it in the hind-leg, below the fetlock joint.

The mddrif was shot by my brother Arthur, and was the first we had seen. It proved to be a small buck ; and, unfortunately, one of the natives cut off the head so near the horns that it was spoiled as a trophy. No amount of exhortation would make them careful in this respect ; and sometimes, when an animal was shot, one of them would be off like a deer after it, and spoil its head before you could stop him.

We found the heat was beginning to get very trying, even the nights being hot ; but it was an intensely dry heat, and none of us were at all the worse for it. On the 8th Mahomet Salee returned with dJinrra, which he had obtained from a Hamran village. The next day we sent him back to Haikota, as well as Bayrumphy, and the other Arabs given us by Sheik Achmed Ageer ; for we were determined that he should make no more out of us than we could help, after the manner in which we had been served by him. The Base had all returned to Lacatecourah the previous day, with the exception of the three horsemen we had taken from Sogada ; these, we said, might either go or stay as they pleased, and they elected to remain with us. Very soon, however, they changed their minds, persuaded to do so, I believe, by Mahomet Salee ; for, after settling to remain with us, we found, on returning from an afternoon's shooting, that they had all taken their departure ; the following day, nevertheless, one of them returned by himself to our camp.