xii ANTELOPE SHOT NEAR CAPE MACLEAR 227 



lately as 1891, I think that a specimen of this ante- 

 lope was undoubtedly shot near Cape Maclear, on 

 the shores of Lake Nyasa itself (where apparently 

 it is not now known to exist), by the late Captain 

 Faulkner in 1866. In his narrative of a journey to 

 Lake Nyasa, in connection with the Livingstone 

 search expedition sent out from England under the 

 command of Lieutenant Young in that year. Captain 

 Faulkner has written, in a little-known work entitled 

 Elephants Haunts : ''I had walked a long way 

 without seeing anything, and as it was getting late, 

 was about returning, when I saw a beautiful antelope 

 feeding near a narrow strip of swamp." This ante- 

 lope he killed, and then described it in the following 

 words : " He was in splendid condition, and a dis- 

 tinctly different animal from any I had hitherto seen ; 

 height at shoulder, 3 ft. 4 in. ; spiral horns, 21 in. 

 long, slightly curved forward, skin of a greyish 

 colour, and covered with white spots, belly white." 



Now, either this antelope shot by Captain 

 Faulkner on the shores of Lake Nyasa was an 

 inyala, or it belonged to a species still unknown to 

 science. Seeing that it has now been ascertained 

 that the inyala is an inhabitant of certain thickets 

 on the banks of the Shire river, at no great distance 

 from the place where Captain Faulkner shot his 

 unidentified specimen, I am inclined to think that 

 the former supposition is the most probable, and 

 that a mistake was made in describing the animal 

 as covered with spots ; for if this sentence had read ; 

 " Of a greyish colour, and covered with white stripes, 

 or white spots and stripes," the whole description, 

 meagre though it is, would have been applicable to 

 a male inyala, which the length and shape of the 

 horns, and the standing height at the shoulder, seem 

 to show that it was. It certainly was not a bush- 

 buck, with which animal Captain Faulkner was well 

 acquainted ; and as the Kafirs chopped off its horns, 



