CHAPTER XXI.

A Visit from two Hamran Sheiks.— Fresh Sport among the Buffaloes. — A Shereker. — A Second Visit from Hamran Sheiks. — They offer to guide us into their own Country. — Three Base join the Camp.— They are attacked by the Hamrans. — Moosa's Discharge.

On the nth two Hamran sheiks arrived in camp. They were most anxious that we should take one of their people as a guide, which we refused to do ; they told us that there was far less to shoot in their country than there had been a few years ago, and that every year the game was decreasing. We needed no one to tell us this, as it was only too evident. There was far less game on the Settite than there had been when some of us had spent a few days on the river four years previously, and even then there was nothing like as much as there had been four or five years before our first visit.

Our Hamran visitors told us that the farthest camp any European had made on the river, entering from their country, had been a few miles higher up than our last camp. They said they were friends with the Abyssinians, and that their head sheik could arrange for us to go into Wolkait by way of Cafta ; that, although they were not afraid of the Abyssinians dwelling on the Settite, nevertheless they did not go very much farther up the river for fear of the Base. The fact was, that the Haikota people would not go with us any higher up the river for fear of the Abyssinians, and that the Hamrans equally would not go for fear of the Base, so that we were checkmated either 178