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This river is similar in character to the Rahad, but larger: the average breadth is about a hundred and ten yards: the banks are about fifty feet high, and the immediate vicinity is covered with thick jungle of nabbuk and thorny acacias, with a great quantity of the Acacia Arabica, that produces the garra, already described as valuable for tanning leather.
We were within half a mile of the camp, and I was pushing my way through some dwarf green nabbuk about 5 feet high, when, upon breaking into a small open glade, a large lion with a dark shaggy mane started to its feet from the spot where it had been lying, probably half asleep.
This was a perfect oasis of verdure, covered with large nabbuk trees, about thirty feet high, and forming a mixture of the densest coverts, with small open glades of rich but low herbage.
Herds of antelopes of many varieties were forced to the river to drink, as the only water within many miles; but these never remained long among the thick nabbuk, as the lions and leopards inhabited that covert expressly to spring upon the unwary animal whose thirst prompted a too heedless advance.
With extraordinary power he breasted the descending stream; gaining a footing in the rapids, about five feet deep, he ploughed his way against the broken waves, sending them in showers of spray upon all sides, and upon gaining broader shallows he tore along through the water, with the buoyant float hopping behind him along the surface, until he landed from the river, started at full gallop along the dry shingly bed, and at length disappeared in the thorny nabbuk jungle.
She had likewise preserved the fruit of the nabbuk in a similar manner: the latter resembles minute apples in appearance, with something of the medlar in flavour; enormous quantities were produced upon the banks of the river, which, falling when ripe, were greedily eaten by guinea-fowl, wild hogs, antelopes, and monkeys.
The position of our camp was exceedingly favourable for game, as the river made a circuitous bend, which had in ages past thrown up a mass of alluvial soil of several hundred acres, all of which was now covered with a succession of dense patches of nabbuk jungle, interspersed with forest trees and numerous small glades of fine dwarf grass, which formed a sward.
Upon reaching the jungle by the river side, we again heard the trumpet of an elephant and about a quarter of a mile distant we observed a herd of twelve of these animals shoulder-deep in the river, which they were in the act of crossing to the opposite side, to secure themselves in an almost impenetrable jungle of thorny nabbuk.
I have frequently known the bodies of large animals, such as elephants and buffaloes, to lie for days beneath the shade of the dense nabbuk bushes, unattended by a single vulture; whereas, if visible, they would have been visited by these birds in thousands. Vultures and the Marabou stork fly at enormous altitudes.
Softly and with difficulty I crept forward, followed closely by my men; through the high withered grass, beneath the dense green nabbuk bushes; peering through the thick covert, with the nerves turned up to full pitch, and the finger on the trigger ready for any emergency.
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