GRACEFUL AFRICAN ANTELOPES 207 



black, carries white markings, a white streak before and behind eacli 

 eye, a white spot between the horns and a white muzzle. The female 

 roan antelope is similar but smaller and hornless. 



The Water-Buck. — Another noble antelope of great interest 

 to the adventurer in Africa, is the water-buck. This animal is about 

 the size of an ass but of somewhat browner color. The hair is coarse 

 like that of the Indian rusa stag and in texture resembles split whale- 

 bone. The appearance of the male animal is stately; the eyes are 

 large and brilliant ; the horns ponderous and overhanging, three feet 

 in length, white, ringed and placed almost perpendicularly on the head, 

 the points being curved to the front. A mane encircles the neck and 

 an elliptical white band the tail which is tufted at the end. The female 

 is similar but slightly smaller and hornless as is usual in the antelope 

 family. The flesh of both is coarse and so ill-savored that even savages 

 are unable to eat it. 



The method of eating adopted by the less civilized of the African 

 natives is both curious and disgusting to an American or European. 

 When they are hungry, as is almost always the case, they do not wait 

 for the game to be cooked, although they prefer it that way, but cutting 

 out sections of the raw meat even before the animal is cold, plunge 

 their teeth into great chunks of it and cut off the remainder close to 

 their lips with the assegais or long-bladed native spears. The quantity 

 of meat required to feed a large safari is almost incredible and not 

 a scrap of an animal is left if the meat is edible, and there are very few 

 things that a savage will not eat. Even the bones are brought to 

 camp, picked clean and the marrow from the larger ones removed. 

 When we consider that a native porter can consume as much as fifteen 

 pounds of meat a day and that from five to seven pounds are absolutely 

 necessary, it is easy to understand that an enormous quantity of game 

 must be killed to supply food. 



Many African hunters have been severely criticized by the uniniti- 

 ated for the seemingly useless slaughter of game, but when it is con- 

 sidered that game is so plentiful that thinning out does not seem to 

 hurt the quantity, and that native wild animals belong by right to the 

 black man, it is proper and just that he should be fed by them. Further 

 than that the lions killed in an average season by sportsmen would 



