-^ The Lonely Woiulcr-worUl of the N\ik:i 



presented itself to me as I emerged from the over- 

 growth of creepers on the boughs of that uprooted tree. 

 First a shrill cry from the monkeys. In a trice the 

 little young ones were clinging to their mothers, and 

 with long bounds the whole crowd of them galloped 

 away over the level ground, hidden in a cloud of dust, 

 and disappeared on the far side of the clearing. Thert! 

 a good many of them halted to look back. Of all the 

 animals known to me only the baboons and the spotted 

 hyenas take to flight in this way. The spectacle has 

 such a surprisingly strange and unaccustomed, almost 

 uncanny effect, that it always recurs to me when I think 

 of these animals. 



The antelopes follow the example of the fugitive 

 baboons, after first rushing hither and thither, right and 

 left, leaping wildly into the air. At this moment the 

 impallah-antelopes, especially, make a splendid picture. 

 Bounding along as if on springs of steel, they shoot 

 up several yards high into the air. Wherever the eye 

 turns it sees the graceful forms of these beautiful 

 animals in all possible positions, making long bounds, 

 some four feet high off the ground, and in every other 

 attitude that one can imagine. But the end of all these 

 splendid pictures, each seen for a moment, is a general 

 stampede. Whirling clouds of dust in the far distance 

 tell for some time longer which way the fugitives have 

 taken. 



But it is not every day that such varied pictures, 

 so richly stored with the life of the primitive animal world 

 of the tropics, present themselves to the traveller. And 

 VOL. I 241 16 



