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While the village praised the perspicacity of the Governor, a naked, pock-marked child strode forward to the earth, and stood on one leg, unconcerned as a young stork. "Hal" he said, hands behind his back. "This should be blocked up with bundles of dhurra stalks or, better, bundles of thorns." "Better thorns," said the Governor. "Thick ends innermost."
It was the custom of these animals to start after sunset, and to arrive at about ten o'clock in the vast dhurra fields of the Arabs, who, being without fire-arms, could only scare them by shouts and flaming torches. The land was rich, and the dhurra grew 10 or 12 feet high, with stems as thick as sugar-cane, while the large heads of corn contained several thousand grains the size of a split-pea.
The character of the ground had changed. We had left the dry portion, which had been lately sown with dhurra, and we had arrived among scattered masses of tall reeds growing from mud lately hardened by the sun and full of deep cattle-ruts. I threw out skirmishers, as we shortly entered a bad piece of country.
There is no covert so much in favour of native warfare as the high dhurra, which perfectly conceals their movements, at the same time that it is easily passed through at speed. The Bari drums were beating throughout the country, and their horns were sounding in all directions.
The average price of dhurra is fifteen piastres per "rachel," or about 3s. 2d. for five hundred pounds upon the spot where it is grown. The land is not only favored by Nature by its fertility, but the intense heat of the summer is the laborer's great assistant.
I immediately ordered my horse, and accompanied by Monsoor and three soldiers of "The Forty" I rode at a trot towards the direction of the firing. I had left a small guard with the boats, as nearly all the men were absent in the interior collecting the ` dhurra.
Those portions secured, with a reserve of meat for ourselves, the usual disgusting scene of violence commenced, the crowd falling upon the carcase like maddened hyaenas. * Hasinth is the Arabic for hippopotamus. "In the evening I resolved to watch the dhurra fields for elephants.
I came up with them about three-quarters of a mile from the first shot; here there was the limit of cultivation, and all was wild prairie land; they had retreated by the way they had arrived, with the intention, no doubt, of returning again to the dhurra when the disturbing cause should have disappeared.
Thus, by a curious chance, upon my first interview with African elephants by daylight, I had killed the identical elephant that I had wounded at Wat el Negur forty-three days before in the dhurra plantation, twenty-eight miles distant! The start from Geera Feats of horsemanship A curious chase Abou Do wins a race Capturing a young buffalo Our island camp Tales of the Base.
The crown is a feather very similar to that of the sugar cane; the blossom falls, and the feather becomes a head of dhurra, weighing about two pounds. Each grain is about the size of hemp-seed. I took the trouble of counting the corns contained in an average-sized head, the result being 4,848.
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