470 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



of wapiti, deer, prongbuck, and mountain-sheep; but it is 

 hard to dogmatize in such matters, for much depends on the 

 cooking, the cHmate, and the surroundings. The eland is 

 by preference a grass-eater, and is usually fat, which makes 

 him a godsend in the African land of lean animals. We also 

 found eland eating aloe leaves. When the country is so 

 parched that the eland's food consists of dry leaves from the 

 thorn-trees, the flesh is poor and tasteless. 



On the whole, eland are warier than any other antelope. 

 They are soft-bodied, and are disabled by a wound which 

 would not cripple one of the smaller antelope or an American 

 deer. So many trustworthy observers report that African 

 antelope are tougher than the deer of the northlands that we 

 suppose they must be right; in our own experience it hap- 

 pened that we were not able to discern any difference be- 

 tween them. 



We found eland in herds of from half a dozen to forty 

 or fifty individuals, the two or three big bulls looming above 

 the cows and young stock. We also occasionally came on 

 bulls singly or in pairs. The very old bulls, called blue bulls 

 because the hide shows through the thin hair, were usually 

 solitary. They are so big and dark that we have known an 

 entire safari mistake one for a rhino when seen a little way 

 off in thin bush. Although so big, eland are less pugnacious 

 than any other big antelope; why the eland, and to a less 

 extent the koodoo, are so mild-tempered, when their small 

 kinsfolk, the bushbucks, are such ferocious fighters, it is im- 

 possible to say. Eland are easily tamed. Our own govern- 

 ment should make a business of importing, taming, and train- 

 ing them; and the African governments should do so at 

 once. In a few generations they would be completely domes- 



