Liberia <•- 



its surroundings. The instant it is conscious of observation it 

 dives into the water. 



The Pecora are fairly well represented in Liberia, though 

 these forest regions have not the wealth of antelope life which is 

 such a splendid feature of the open country in Tropical Africa. The 

 Tragelaphs are represented by the beautiful Harnessed antelope 

 (^Tragelaphus scriptus — see pp. 737 and 740), with its red-gold 

 coat of long silky hair brilliantly striped and spotted with white ; 

 and by the still more magnificent Broad-horned tragelaph or 

 Bongo' — Boocercus eurycerus. There should also be, one would 

 think, the Gigantic eland of West A?r\cdi—Taurotragus derbiatius — 

 which is found in the interior of the Gambia, French Guinea, 

 Sierra Leone, and at intervals throughout West Africa till the 

 Bahr-al-Ghazal and northern basin of the Congo are reached ; 

 but, so far, no record of this eland's existence in Liberia has been 

 obtained. The Broad-horned tragelaph is perhaps found in the 

 interior of the forested regions of Sierra Leone, but I do not 

 think it has been recorded from any other part of Africa west of 

 Sierra Leone. Its range, with one or two local variations of 

 type, however, is a very wide one, as it extends throughout the 

 coast regions of Western Africa (Sierra Leone and Liberia, the 

 Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast), to the Cameroons, the Gaboon, 

 and the greater part of the Congo Basin, right away to the 

 easternmost frontiers of the Uganda Protectorate. In a remark- 

 able way (akin possibly to the distribution of the forest pig) it 

 reappears after a break in Uganda in the forested regions of the 

 Nandi Plateau, north-east of the Victoria Nyanza. Here a hint of 

 its rediscovery was first obtained by the late Captain B. L. Sclater. 

 Mr. Jackson, a sub-commissioner in those regions, sent home 

 horns of this tragelaph, and so did the present writer in 1901, 

 who obtained them from Andorobo hunters in the Nandi forests. 



' Called by the Germans the Lyre-horned antelope. 

 728 



