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There was lots of game for our table, from the most delicious grouse to the oribi, whose meat is the tenderest I have ever eaten. There were ducks and geese and Kavirondo crane; and sometimes eland, as fine in flavor as that of the prize steer of the fat-stock show. Then there were reedbuck and cob, both of which are very good to eat.
But in this afternoon tramp around the low cliffs after the elusive reedbuck, I for the first time became acquainted with a man who developed into a real friend. His name is Memba Sasa. Memba Sasa are two Swahili words meaning "now a crocodile." Subsequently, after I had learned to talk Swahili, I tried to find out what he was formerly, before he was a crocodile, but did not succeed.
The extreme beauty of this antelope led us to secure a group of them for the Field Museum. The reedbuck is another of the smaller antelopes that carries a beautiful head, and, like nearly all of the antelopes, comes in many varieties, or subspecies.
In the afternoon we hunted for lions, beating out swamps, scouting every bit of cover and combing the tall grass for hours at a time. Hartebeest, topi, zebra, eland, oribi, reedbuck, and small grass antelope were upon all sides and at all times.
Fred was on one side of "Ake," Jimmy on another, and I on Fred's left. Thus we slowly moved toward the elephants. A reedbuck was startled out of the grass and noisily ran away, giving the alarm. The elephants began feeling in the air with their trunks and their ears began to wave uneasily. Finally they turned and seemed about to go away.
The beaters chant a weird and rather musical refrain as they advance and thrash the high reeds with their sticks. Reedbuck, sometimes a bushbuck, frequently hyenas, and many large owls are driven out of nearly every good-sized swamp. The hunters divide, one or more on each side of the swamp and slightly ahead of the line of beaters.
The reedbuck has short horns, usually between seven and ten inches in length, but one of our party secured one set of horns ten and a quarter inches long an exceptionally fine head. The reedbuck's distinguishing characteristic is a sharp whistle, which he sounds shrilly when alarmed.
This desire to protect the male is common to many of the antelope family, and numberless times I have seen a band of does attempt to screen the male and shield him from harm. The reedbuck never travels in large numbers, seldom more than two or three, or at most, five or six, being bunched together. We had most of our reedbuck experiences while driving swamps for lions.
At other times, after the skirmish line apparently had traversed every foot of a swamp, reedbuck would spring up after the line had passed, thus illustrating how close they can lie and how effectually they can escape detection.
There were kongoni, zebra, topi, waterbuck, wart-hogs, reedbuck, oribi, eland, and Uganda cob, but scour the country as we would, we saw no sign of elephant except the broad trails in the grass and the countless evidences that they had been in the region some time before. The country was beautiful and wholesome.
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