GOOD SPORTING GROUND.

the ground, and because we were far too large a party to have invariably gone out shooting singly. Gf course, by dividing into two parties, and having separate camps, each taking a different district, we might have augmented the bag ; but in such an expedition as ours, we felt that, although shooting formed our chief amusement, yet still there were many other considerations which made it both pleasanter and more desirable to hang together. For instance, in the Base country, which occupied the larger portion of our time in the game districts, the trouble and risk of entering that territory would have been more than doubled by dividing the party. Again, the Hamran country is in itself but a small slice of the Soudan ; and, being inhabited by a race of hunters, the part which contains game is even more circumscribed, and would soon be shot out by a party armed with English rifles. Moreover, we all thoroughly appreciated the old adage "The more the merrier;" and fighting our battles over again, over a dish of succulent buffalo or antelope steak, on one's return in the evening, was not the least agreeable part of the day's programme.

Finding the neighbourhood of Om Hagar so well off for antelope, we were anxious to lose no time in exploring for larger game. The day after our arrival there, my brother William and I went out together. We crossed the river, and were not long in discovering the tracks of a large bull buffalo, which led us to a small pool of water near our camp, in what, for want of a better name, we always termed the kJior. This was the dry part of the river's bed, which, uniting with the main body, of the stream, formed during the flood season an island, to which allusion has already been made. The accompanying woodcut is engraved from a photograph of this khor taken by Aylmer.

The buffalo had been quenching his thirst in this khor the previous evening ; his tracks led us back through the dense nebbuk-