THE GUASO NYERO 275 



Ciceronian theory, that he who throws the javelin all day 

 must hit the mark some time. Accordingly I emptied the 

 magazines of both my rifles at the oryx, as they ran across 

 my front, and broke the neck of a fine cow, at four hundred 

 and fifty yards. Six or seven hundred yards off the sur- 

 vivors stopped, and the biggest bull, evidently much put 

 out, uttered loud bawling grunts and drove the others 

 round with his horns. Meanwhile I was admiring the 

 handsome dun gray coat of my prize, its long tail and long, 

 sharp, slender horns, and the bold black and white mark- 

 ings on its face. Hardly had we skinned the carcass before 

 the vultures lit on it; with them were two marabou storks, 

 one of which I shot with a hard bullet from the Springfield. 

 The oryx, like the roan and sable, and in striking con- 

 trast to the eland, is a bold and hard fighter, and when 

 cornered will charge a man or endeavor to stab a lion. If 

 wounded it must be approached with a certain amount of 

 caution. The eland, on the other hand, in spite of its 

 huge size, is singularly mild and inoffensive, an old bull 

 being as inferior to an oryx in the will and power to fight 

 as it is in speed and endurance. "Antelope," as I have 

 said, is a very loose term, meaning simply any hollow-horned 

 ruminant that isn't an ox, a sheep, or a goat. The eland is 

 one of the group of tragelaphs, which are as different from 

 the true antelopes, such as the gazelles, as they are from the 

 oxen. One of its kinsfolk is the handsome little bushbuck, 

 about as big as a white-tail deer; a buck of which Kermit 

 had killed two specimens. The bushbuck is a wicked 

 fighter, no other buck of its size being as dangerous; which 

 makes the helplessness and timidity of its huge relative all 

 the more striking. 



