620 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



pursued by man they lie hid in cover during the daytime. 

 We found one herd coming to water early in the afternoon 

 and another about sunset. They advanced in the fashion 

 of most game, keeping in the open with no attempt to hide, 

 continually halting and bounding away on false alarms. 

 One herd took half an hour in traversing the last three 

 hundred yards to the drinking-place; then they drank at a 

 shallow place, evidently fearing crocodiles nearly as much 

 as leopards. Impalla, like waterbuck, reedbuck, and bush- 

 buck, drink frequently — two or three times a day — being 

 wholly unable to stand thirst like the species of the plains 

 and the desert. 



Some of them on the Athi were infected with ticks, 

 which clustered at the bases of the horns. The leopard 

 was their chief enemy. They were very shy on the plains, 

 less so in the woods. We did not find them tenacious of 

 life, as most African game is said to be; twice individuals 

 succumbed to wounds which would hardly have prevented 

 a blacktail or a whitetail deer from making off. 



Impalla are abundant about the slopes of Kilimanjaro, 

 and are occasionally found in the adjacent desert tracts 

 of Taita and the Taru, but are absent from the moist 

 coast belt. Westward they are not uncommon along the 

 German border as far west as the Victoria Nyanza, but 

 their real centre of abundance is the Rift Valley. Both 

 Count Teleki and Jackson have found them as far north as 

 the Turkwell River, in which region they reach their extreme 

 northern limit. The Ankole district in southern Uganda 

 represents the northwestern limit of the range of the 

 impalla, which is not known to occur farther north in the 

 Nile Valley proper. Bohm, who furnished Matschie with 

 the material for the description of the equatorial race of 

 the impalla, obtained his specimen near Tabora, directly 

 south of the Victoria Nyanza and east of the northern shores 



