On the following day I took the half of the caravan which I had chosen for the koodoo-hunting trip, and marched three miles, from Mandeira wells to a small spring just under the crest of Gán Libah Mountain, which is six thousand feet above sea-level. The height of our camp here was four thousand five hundred feet. In the morning, while the men were moving camp to the new site, I took my two hunters Géli and Hassan, and an Esa Musa guide from some karias which we found at Mandeira, and searched the hills for koodoo, but only saw some female koodoo and young ones, so we made for camp, which we found pitched in a very pretty little glade on the hillside. I had no tent, but a small hut made of camel-mats, covered over with waterproof sheets, and fastened to some poles which we cut from the thorn bushes. To the east, just below camp, was a rocky torrent-bed, with stretches of flat sand in the bottom, and a small stream trickling through it, forming waterfalls of a foot or two in height, and flowing northwards into the Tug Mandeira. All the country for a mile or two round was very much broken and cut up by ravines from Gán Libah and other high mountains overlooking the camp; and in these ravines were long strips of the _gudá_ jungle, with thick aloe undergrowth four feet high.
Three miles north-west, on the right bank of the Tug Mandeira sand-river, rises a very curious pinnacle or boss of hard rock, called Dagaha Todobálla, or the “Rock of the Seven Robbers” (from _todoba_, seven). The story goes that seven Jibril Abokr robbers came from the west on one of their periodical raids, to search for plunder among the Esa Musa flocks grazing at the foot of the Gólis Range; but the Esa Musa collected in force, and these men fled to the top of the almost inaccessible rock, where they were surrounded and finally cut to pieces by the enraged tribesmen. Rising as it does to a height of about a hundred feet above a sea of jungle of the large _gudá_ thorn-trees, it forms a very beautiful addition to Mandeira scenery, which indeed is all very striking. There are several of these rocks and hillocks in the Mandeira Valley, and the large thorn jungles round their bases are the home of that lovely antelope, the lesser koodoo, which combines many of the beauties of both the large koodoo and the African striped bushbuck, and is midway between them in size. There are also wart-hog, Waller’s gazelles, the tiny _Sakáro_, as well as guinea-fowl and large koodoo in the mountains close by.