PIG-FLESH AND INCONSISTENCY 73 within easy shot. To my astonishment, they were readily taken as food by my Mahommedan companions, who on no account would touch my homefed bacon, virtue apparently residing in the fact that the animals were wild, though I am not aware that the Prophet made any distinction in his injunction against the use of pig's-flesh. In the early days of the Transvaal, I recollect a very decided antipathy to the flesh of the native porker, owing even more to his indiscriminate appetite than to his leanness, for all was fish that came to his net, not excluding odd defunct Kaffirs.

On the far side, the direction for a time was between the Rahad and the Dinder. A waving sea of grass lay before us, through which we plunged for a mile or more, and which doubtless held much game. Countless buffalo might have rested in security in this maya without the slightest sign of their presence. In this uncertain possibility lies one of the charms of Africa. Any bush may hide a beast ; a tuft of grass may give birth to sudden life ; one's eyes become accustomed to an eternal roving yet unconscious watchfulness, and are ready to detect the slightest movement, unusual circumstance or form.

Moisture here shows its beneficent influence, for the other side of the maya (can this word be related to the corresponding "mere" in England?) is luxuriant in vegetation, being a trackless jungle of thick, branching trees with dense masses of creepers. Here our way had to be hacked out