We had settled, H. and I, and Fisk, to go at dawn of day to try and get some duck in a pool just at the foot of the high rock on which the house stood, so next morning off we started. It was bitterly cold and a white frost on the ground. We crept down to the pool and let fly all six barrels into the middle of the flock. Sad to relate, only three fell, which were not picked up; one of Kirkham's Galla boys was sent down later in the day and discovered two.
We then proceeded up the pools; I flushed a snipe and knocked him down, he was rather a lean specimen of his kind. On our way home I saw those large cranes again coming towards me, so I squatted down as close to the ground as I could and waited; the flock kept coming on, making a great noise and screeching, but they saw me and wheeled away. One old gentleman, rather in advance of the others, wheeled rather close to me; I let fly my 16-bore No. 1 shot: it did not seem to affect him in the least, when after going a little way, all of a sudden he fell like a stone. I ran as hard as I could and found him quite dead, with his backbone cut right through by the shot; how he could possibly have kept flying in this state I do not know. His shank-bones will make excellent pipe stems.
The rest of this day we were engaged in again shifting our provisions, etc., into skin bags; as boxes are very bad things to carry either by coolies, mules, or donkeys. It is the custom in Abyssinia to have all one's baggage, as far as possible, packed in these bags, and then the coolies do not mind carrying them so much. A box is so hard it hurts a man's shoulder when he carries it, and as for mules and donkeys it means sore backs at once; besides, the leather thongs that bind the box on to the mule are always slipping. We paid a Maria Theresa for two of these bags, and found it rather difficult to get them. Kirkham had gone to Asmarra to make arrangements for coolies, and when he came back, he said everything was completed, and that we should start to-morrow at sunrise. Vain hope, as the reader will see; for, instead of starting at sunrise, we started at sunset. The people who dwell in the gorgeous East have no idea of time, and always think that Europeans are in a hurry, and that to-morrow will do as well as to-day.