200 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



Sotik the topis all seemed to have calves of about the same 

 age, as if born from four to six months earlier; the young 

 of the other game were of every age. The males of all the 

 antelope fought much among themselves. The gazelle 

 bucks of both species would face one another, their heads 

 between the forelegs and the horns level with the ground, 

 and each would punch his opponent until the hair flew. 



Watching the game, one was struck by the intensity and 

 the evanescence of their emotions. Civilized man now 

 usually passes his life under conditions which eliminate 

 the intensity of terror felt by his ancestors when death by 

 violence was their normal end, and threatened them during 

 every hour of the day and night. It is only in nightmares 

 that the average dweller in civilized countries now under- 

 goes the hideous horror which was the regular and frequent 

 portion of his ages-vanished forefathers, and which is still 

 an everyday incident in the lives of most wild creatures. 

 But the dread is short-lived, and its horror vanishes with 

 instantaneous rapidity. In these wilds the game dreaded 

 the lion and the other flesh-eating beasts rather than man. 

 We saw innumerable kills of all the buck, and of zebra, 

 the neck being usually dislocated, and it being evident that 

 none of the lion's victims, not even the truculent wilde- 

 beest or huge eland, had been able to make any fight against 

 him. The game is ever on the alert against this greatest of 

 foes, and every herd, almost every individual, is in immi- 

 nent and deadly peril every few days or nights, and of course 

 suffers in addition from countless false alarms. But no 

 sooner is the danger over than the animals resume their 

 feeding, or love making, or their fighting among themselves. 

 Two bucks will do battle the minute the herd has stopped 



