364 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



they are more watchful and wary than other game, and 

 probably disHke approaching a pool after nightfall for fear 

 of the lion. If hartebeests or zebras are with wildebeests 

 as they approach water, the former generally lead, the 

 wildebeests hanging back. We have seen this again and 

 again, and but once did we see the wildebeests of a mixed 

 herd take the lead in approaching a pool. Mr. Abel Chap- 

 man, in "On Safari," has given an amusing and interesting 

 description of the way that a herd of wildebeests will some- 

 times wait about until a hartebeest turns up as leader to 

 take it to water. As is true of all game, wildebeest are 

 much less apt to detect a foe lying in wait for them in the 

 path they are following than to detect one endeavoring to 

 approach them. If the direction in which a herd is travel- 

 ling can be ascertained, a stunted, well-nigh leafless bush 

 will serve as ambush sufficient for any one who crouches 

 absolutely motionless in its shade. It is motion that 

 catches the eye of game, and, moreover, any color loses much 

 of whatever conspicuousness it possesses if broken light and 

 shade fall on it. Time and again we have thus crouched 

 beside or behind a bush and watched files of zebra and 

 hartebeest and parties of wildebeest and gazelles and water- 

 buck canter by within less than a hundred yards — often 

 not a score of yards away. They never noticed us. 



Usually wildebeest are very local in their habits, the 

 same herd keeping within a radius of three or four miles. 

 At one camp where we spent a week or so we always found 

 one herd of wildebeests kept within a couple of miles of a 

 boldly shaped hill; and three or four miles off a single bull 

 lived by himself, occasionally joining a party of gazelles 

 and hartebeests but never coming near his own kinsfolk. 



