A BLUE WILDEBEEST HUNT 201 



sweet pale blue, except in the east, where the rising 

 sun has painted the heavens with flaming colours. 

 At present the view is clear and uninterrupted, and 

 the desert air cool and pleasant. In a little while 

 the mirage will be flitting upon those spreading 

 savannahs, the heat — winter-time though it is — will 

 be fierce and oven-like, and the sky glaring and 

 brassy. 



One of the two men has descried, more than half- 

 a-mile away, a dark line of game moving leisurely 

 from the river across the plain. For a minute they 

 debate upon the species, and then one of the hunters 

 stoops down, creeps upon his wagon-bed, and un- 

 slings a long stalking-glass from its place. This 

 is quickly adjusted, and now, resting the glass upon 

 the tilt, the hunter carefully examines the trekking 

 game. It is a spectacle that thrills the watcher 

 with delight. Between thirty and forty blue wilde- 

 beest are stringing their way in single file across the 

 flats. They are most of them full-grown bulls, and, 

 through the powerful glass, their heavy buffalo-like 

 fronts, cumbrous and lowering and shaggy with 

 long hair, are plainly apparent. These great 

 antelopes — brindled gnu they are called in Europe, 

 in South Africa invariably blue wildebeest — have, 

 according to their custom, crossed the wide plain 

 durino- the nio^ht, have drunk their fill at the big 

 river, and are now retiring at walking pace to their 



