ON AN EAST AFRICAN RANCH 49 



jaws; they will, when in a herd, drive off hyena or wild 

 dogs, and will turn on hounds, if the hunter is not near. 

 If the lion is abroad in the daytime, they, as well as the 

 other game, seem to realize that he cannot run them down; 

 and though they follow his movements with great alertness, 

 and keep at a respectful distance, they show no panic. Or- 

 dinarily, as I saw them, they did not seem very shy of men; 

 but in this respect all the game displayed the widest differ- 

 ences, from time to time, without any real cause, that I could 

 discern, for the difference. At one hour, or on one day, the 

 zebra and hartebeest would flee from our approach when half 

 a mile off; and again they would permit us to come within 

 a couple of hundred yards, before moving slowly away. On 

 two or three occasions at lunch herds of zebra remained for 

 half an hour watching us with much curiosity not over a hun- 

 dred yards off. Once, when we had been vainly beating for 

 lions at the foot of the Elukania ridge, at least a thousand 

 zebras stood, in herds, on every side of us, throughout 

 lunch; they were from two to four hundred yards distant, 

 and I was especially struck by the fact that those which 

 were to leeward and had our wind were no more alarmed 

 than the others. I have seen them water at dawn and sun- 

 set, and also in the middle of the day; and I have seen 

 them grazing at every hour of the day, although I believe 

 most freely in the morning and evening. At noon and until 

 the late afternoon those I saw were quite apt to be resting, 

 either standing or lying down. They are noisy. Harte- 

 beests merely snort or sneeze now and then; but the shrill, 

 querulous barking of the "bonte quaha," as the Boers call 

 the zebra, is one of the common sounds of the African plains, 

 both by day and night. It is usually represented in books by 



