PRIMEVAL MAN 199 



sunlight. Buffalo sought the shade of the 

 thorn-trees, their bodies black and their great 

 horn-bosses glinting white. Hippos snorted 

 and gambolled in the water. Dominant always, 

 wherever we saw them, were the lion and the 

 elephant; and the favorite prey of the lion 

 was the zebra, the striped wild horse of the 

 African wastes. 



Of course, these many different creatures 

 were not all to be seen at any one time or in any 

 one place. But again and again there were so 

 many of them that we felt as if we were passing 

 through a gigantic zoological garden. Often 

 the line of our burden-bearing carriers had to 

 be shifted from its point of march, to avoid a 

 rhinoceros which stared at us with dull and 

 truculent curiosity; while the zebra herds filed 

 off with barking cries across the sunlit plain, 

 and delicate gazelles, dainty as wood-sprites, 

 fled Uke shadows, and hartebeests gazed to- 

 ward us with long, homely faces; or we stopped 

 to watch a herd of elephants, cows and calves, 

 browsing among the thorns, their curling trunks 

 raised now and then to test the wind, or per- 

 haps one big ear lifted and then slapped back 

 against the body. 



One day at noon, in the Sotik country of 

 East Africa, we stopped to skin a hyena which 



