THE BIG GAME OF AFRICA 



one of the nearby bushes. Had I not been so fortunate 

 with my last shot, I might have, through his neghgence, 

 in not keeping close to me, either lost the beautiful trophy 

 or else been scratched and possibly badly mauled by the 

 big cat. 



The cheetah is a very w^ary animal and seems to possess 

 most excellent eyesight. There are probably no other ani- 

 mals that can see as well both by day and by night as the 

 members of the cat family, and so far as my experience 

 goes, none of the felines is able to detect a sportsman at 

 a greater distance than the cheetah. I have been seen re- 

 peatedly by hunting leopards on the plains at distances of 

 fully eight hundred or one thousand yards, when they have 

 made good their escape into the high grass before I had 

 any chance of stalking them. In 1909, however, when 

 hunting on the Sotik plains, only a few weeks before Colo- 

 nel Roosevelt made his shooting expedition to these famous 

 regions, very early one morning we espied two cheetahs 

 lying on the grass close to each other. The sun had not 

 yet risen, and there was just light enough to shoot, when 

 we detected these two animals at a distance of some six 

 hundred yards. As I was whispering to Asgar, our brave 

 lion chaser, and pointing out the leopards to him, the big 

 cats saw us, and made ofif in long bounds. In an instant 

 Asgar flung himself on the hunting pony; and then fol- 

 lowed a most interesting chase. For the first few moments 

 the two leopards, probably male and female, ran close 

 together and seemed to outdistance Asgar and the pony, 

 but after having run for a few hundred yards they sepa- 

 rated, Asgar chasing the big male, now gaining on him 

 more and more. We followed behind as fast as we could, 



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