374 LARGE GAME. CHAP. vm. 



but just when I was noting a big stone in their path as the 

 spot which I would allow them to reach before I fired, and 

 was calculating the exact distance, Klaas choked, and after 

 a vain struggle to suppress it, began to cough violently. 

 They instantly stopped feeding and looked up, and just 

 as the leader, a male, began to turn away, I pulled the 

 trigger. He made a magnificent bound into the air and 

 fell dead, rolling twenty or thirty yards down the incline. 

 My second bullet made the chips fly from a stone between 

 a smaller male's feet as the pair rapidly disappeared round 

 the face of the hill, and then I lost no time in going 

 down to examine my first antelope. He was an old male, 

 and a fine specimen. The species to which he belonged, 

 though almost approaching a fallow-deer in size, more 

 nearly resembles a chamois in other particulars ; indeed, 

 it has been called the African chamois, and so far deserves 

 the title, that it certainly possesses many of the charac- 

 teristics and habits of the European species decidedly 

 more so than any other of the antelope genus found 

 in South Africa, with the exception of the klipspringer. 

 Their colour is light grey, the hair being somewhat long 

 and coarse, and the horns are straight, and by no means 

 unusually large for the animal's size. They are never 

 found but on the bare hills, among rocks and stones, and 

 their powers of springing are wonderful. It seems extra- 

 ordinary how their delicate limbs escape injury, when 

 they take bound after bound, like an indiarubber ball, in 

 places that a cat would shudder at. I do not suppose 

 that they are really more shy than some of the more wary- 

 antelopes, but the nature of the ground which they inhabit 

 makes it appear so. That it is hard to get near them no 



