ON AN EAST AFRICAN RANCH 53 



again. In the same way the habits of the game as to mi- 

 gration vary with the different districts, in Africa as in 

 America. There are places where all the game, perhaps 

 notably the wildebeests, gather in herds of thousands, at 

 certain times, and travel for scores of miles, so that a dis- 

 trict which is teeming with game at one time may be almost 

 barren of large wild life at another. But my information 

 was that around the Kapiti Plains there was no such com- 

 plete and extensive shift. If the rains are abundant and 

 the grass rank, most of the game will be found far out in 

 the middle of the plains; if, as was the case at the time 

 of my visit, there has been a long drought the game will 

 be found ten or fifteen miles away, near or among the foot- 

 hills. 



Unless there was something special on, like a lion- or 

 rhinoceros-hunt, I usually rode off followed only by my 

 sais and gun-bearers. I cannot describe the beauty and 

 the unceasing interest of these rides, through the teeming 

 herds of game. It was like retracing the steps of time for 

 sixty or seventy years, and being back in the days of Corn- 

 wallis Harris and Gordon Cumming, in the palmy times 

 of the giant fauna of South Africa. On Pease's own farm 

 one day I passed through scores of herds of the beautiful 

 and wonderful wild creatures I have spoken of above; all 

 told there were several thousands of them. With the ex- 

 ception of the wildebeest, most of them were not shy, and I 

 could have taken scores of shots at a distance of a couple of 

 hundred yards or thereabout. Of course, I did not shoot 

 at anything unless we were out of meat or needed the skin 

 for the collection; and when we took the skin we almost 

 always took the meat too, for the porters, although they 



