-> The Antelopes of Mast Africa 



disposed to make a rush at me. In a moment I was hurled 

 several feet into the air. It was only by a miracle that 

 I escaped very serious injury, it not death. It took three 

 or four active: men, armed like myself, with whips, to 

 drive the beasts off. In a week, however, the bull began 

 to show its contempt tor even the heaviest whips, and 

 at last it had to be 1 enclosed with its companion in a 

 smaller piece of ground, fenced in with strong stakes. Its 

 temper gradually got worse there, and at last it became 

 astonishingly wild. The bull in the Zoological Gardens 

 behaved in a very similar way. A short time afterwards 

 all three animals died ot tuberculosis. Hitherto no 

 other white-bearded gnus have, I think, been brought to 

 Kurope, but it is to be- hoped that this will be achieved 

 later. 



(inus are fonder than any other antelope of the open 

 vclt. upon which they are usually to lie found. Before: 

 us there spreads, in the burning sunlight, the vast extent 

 ot the bright-hued, reddish, glimmering laterite soil : and 

 hundreds ot animals, thronging together, enliven its arid 

 stretches with colours that vary in the varying lights. 

 When the oft-seen mirage rises from the plain in 

 the midday glow giving the illusion ot bluish water- 

 surfaces the gnus and zebras look as if they were moving 

 about in water. About middav isolated groups ot gnus 

 take their siesta under the scattered, meagre thorn-bushes 

 ot ^alradora f>crsica and other trees; but during the 

 rest of the day the herds are to be seen dispersed over 

 the plain. 



It is very evident that here, as everywhere, lite in the 



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