280 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



I could do. My men feasted on oryx and eland, while I re- 

 served the tongues and tenderloins for myself. Each day 

 I hunted for eight or ten hours, something of interest always 

 happening. I would not shoot at the gazelles; and the 

 game I did want was so shy that almost all my shots were 

 at long range, and consequently a number of them did not 

 hit. However, I came on my best oryx in rather thick bush, 

 and killed it at a hundred and twenty-five yards, as it 

 turned with a kind of sneeze of alarm or curiosity, and 

 stood broadside to me, the sun glinting on its handsome 

 coat and polished black horns. One of my Kikuyu followers 

 packed the skin entire to camp. I had more trouble with 

 another oryx, wounding it one evening at three hundred 

 and fifty yards, and next morning following the trail and 

 after much hard work and a couple of misses killing it with 

 a shot at three hundred yards. On September 2, I found 

 two newly born oryx calves. The color of the oryx made 

 them less visible than hartebeest when a long way off on 

 the dry plains. I noticed that whenever we saw them 

 mixed in a herd with zebra, it was the zebra that first struck 

 our eyes. But in bright sunlight, in bush, I also noticed 

 that the zebra themselves were hard to see. 



One afternoon, while skirting the edge of a marsh 

 teeming with waders and water-fowl, I came across four 

 stately Kavirondo cranes, specimens of which bird the 

 naturalists had been particularly anxious to secure. They 

 were not very shy for cranes, but they would not keep still, 

 and I missed a shot with the Springfield as they walked 

 along about a hundred and fifty yards ahead of me. How- 

 ever, they were unwise enough to circle round me when 

 they rose, still keeping the same distance, and all the time 



