BUFFALOES 411 



herd trusted to the vigilance and the sharp senses of its 

 members, individually and collectively. 



The Abyssinian buffaloes we encountered were in the 

 Lado, on the western bank of the Nile. They were living 

 in country much like that along the Northern Guaso Nyiro, 

 and their habits were substantially those of their Northern 

 Guaso Nyiro cousins. At one camp by a native village, we 

 found a herd living in the dense reed beds, through which 

 they had trampled a tangle of trails. This herd entirely 

 realized that they were safe in their reed fastnesses, and only 

 came into the open country at night to graze. Yet in the 

 same neighborhood there were other buffaloes with entirely 

 different habits. These lived among the dry, scattered 

 thorn-trees, which, interspersed with a few other trees such 

 as palms, covered the surrounding country, but nowhere 

 formed thick cover. There were a few pools at which these 

 buffaloes drank. They fed and rested alternately through- 

 out the day and night. We found a bull grazing at mid- 

 day. They rested, standing or lying down, among the 

 nearly leafless thorn-trees, which gave scant shelter from 

 the sun. 



Aside from man, the buffalo's one enemy is the lion. Of 

 course, a crocodile may occasionally take one, or a calf or 

 yearling may be killed by wild hounds, but the lion is the 

 only beast that ever follows the buffalo as an ordinary prey. 

 There are localities where lions prey on buffaloes almost 

 solely, just as in some other places they prey almost exclu- 

 sively on domestic cattle. But where we were the lions 

 habitually preyed on other game and rarely attacked either 

 buffaloes or cattle. In the Lado they killed pigs and ante- 

 lopes; in East Africa, zebras and antelopes. A buffalo is a 



