ONE AFRICAN DAY 195 



lovely just to sit and watch all these delightful 

 creatures, so quiet and undisturbed that it was 

 evident we were far from the ken of civilisation. 



There was yet a good hour of daylight, so I 

 mounted my old horse " Kongoni " and went 

 south, and then circled back towards camp as 

 the sun came near the horizon. As we proceeded 

 quietly, the game seemed in no way alarmed. They 

 just stopped feeding and moved slowly aside for a 

 hundred yards or so, and then settled again. I 

 saw nothing to tempt me to fire a shot until near 

 the camp, when a big herd of Wildebeest galloped 

 past and then stopped. The master bull seemed 

 a good one, so I resolved to try him, although he 

 was a fairly long shot — 250 yards. I heard the 

 bullet tell loudly on his side, and he ran some 

 twenty yards, wheeled round in the cloud of dust 

 once or twice and fell dead. This was fortunate, 

 as I hoped to find a lion at the carcase at 

 daybreak. 



On arriving within a few hundred yards of 

 camp again I encountered the big herd of Thomson's 

 Gazelle usually found on the fiat above the river. 

 The light was going fast, but there was enough 

 to see a wonderful male with a head such as I had 

 never seen before. I tried hard to get a shot at 

 him, but presently he got amongst the mass of 

 animals standing against the dark bush, when I 

 completely failed to see him. I marked him for 

 next morning, but never saw him again.^ 



Arrived in camp, I handed over my Wildebeest 



* There is little doubt that this was the same animal Baron 

 de Rothschild shot about six months later. The horns measured 

 16^ inches, which is the record for Thomson's Gazelle. 



