WILDEBEEST AND HARTEBEEST 383 



hartebeest. Evidently his opponent had stabbed him in 

 the chest, hooking him with an upward motion as they 

 faced each other, and, when he turned, had ripped open his 

 flank. Rather curiously, the only injury actually inflicted 

 on any man or horse of the Buff^alo Jones party, in roping 

 lion, boar, rhinoceros, giraffe, zebra, eland, and other ante- 

 lope, was by a hartebeest; after it was roped the cowboys 

 were careless with it, thinking it harmless, and with a 

 sudden rush it stabbed the horse of one of them. They 

 doctored the wound and the horse recovered. These cow- 

 boys, by the way, rode down and roped the hartebeest in 

 fair chase. This is not a feat to which ordinary African 

 hunting-ponies are equal, but Buffalo Jones and his cow- 

 boys, Messrs. Means and Loveless, were mounted on the 

 best type of Western American cow-horses, big, blooded 

 beasts of great speed, courage, endurance, and sure-footed- 

 ness. They could overtake any animal in Africa. In 

 our experience we found the topi, hartebeest, and wilde- 

 beest (we did not chase the gazelles) the fleetest animals 

 of the plains; on our horses we could not overtake them 

 when they were in small parties or single, but when in 

 herds they interfered with one another and we could get 

 close enough for a shot. Hartebeest and topi were the 

 fastest. They were very agile, too, and would bound 

 easily over one another or over low ant-hills. Two or 

 three of our horses could overtake zebra, and eland were 

 not difficult to ride down. Once we crouched among some 

 thin, low thorn-bushes and watched long files of zebra and 

 hartebeest canter by within a few score yards; we were 

 interested and surprised to see that the hartebeest fre- 

 quently cantered with their mouths open, which we had 



