136 Field Columbian Museum — Zoology, Vol. i. 



watch the animal, took a stroll about the jungle. The peaks of 

 Nasr Hablod, or Virgin's Breast, were only a few hundred yards in 

 front of me, and I was irresistibly drawn towards them, influenced 

 probably by the memory of the Big Bull Koodoo I had killed at 

 their base the day before. I moved cautiously towards them, 

 hiding myself as much as possible in the gullies and ravines, until 

 I had drawn very near the base of the small peak, and stepped 

 behind some huge rocks. Farther I could not go without 

 exposing myself to any animal in front of my position. From 

 my post I took a careful look over the ground, and saw a band of 

 antelopes running up the sides of the peak. They stopped in 

 the shade of a spreading thorn tree and gazed in my direction. 

 From their manner of moving and the great size and peculiar 

 slope of their ears, they seemed to me to be Koodoo cows and 

 calves. To my right was a great mass of rocks, which if I could 

 reach I would be within two hundred yards of the animals, as the 

 distance seemed to me at the time. I crawled on all fours 

 behind the rocks and then made a wide detour, keeping in the 

 . gullies, and finally gained the desired place. Peering cautiously 

 over the rocks I saw them still standing in the shade of the tree. 

 I fired two or three times, my bullets all going high, and then I 

 began to realize that instead of shooting at Koodoo two hundred 

 yards or more away, I was firing at a much smaller ante- 

 lope only about seventy-five yards from me. The steep 

 mountain side strewn with small stones, together with the 

 Koodoo-like movements of the animals and their large ears had 

 completely deceived me. They were now thoroughly alarmed, 

 but as they could not tell where the shots came from on account 

 of the echoes they merely ran about in a confused way. I took 

 careful aim and knocked one over, but he immediately rose and 

 crawled under a bush. At the next shot I killed one in his 

 tracks, and the remaining ones made a dash to escape, running 

 past me at about forty yards. I succeeded in stopping one for a 

 moment, but it rose to its feet and fell again two or three times 

 and at last stopped as I supposed for good. I then tried to 

 take possession of my game and got within ten feet of 

 the one I had first wounded and stood looking at it, surprised 

 to find it was such a little fellow. It was a hard thing to 

 come down from the idea of a Big Koodoo, one of the 

 grandest of African antelope, to a little thing not over twenty 

 inches high at the shoulder. I noticed that it had straight 

 sharp horns about four or five inches long, and just then it came 



