570 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



noticed the courage evinced by our horses, in the pursuit of 

 game. Even when brought into actual contact with these 

 almost unearthly quadrupeds, they evinced no symptom of 

 alarm, a circumstance which may possibly be traced to their 

 meagre diet. 



The colossal height, and apparent disproportions of this 

 extraordinary animal, long classed it with the unicorn and 

 the sphynx of the ancients, and induced a belief that it 

 belonged rather to the group of chimeras with which the 

 regions of imagination are tenanted, than existed amongst 

 the actual works of nature. Of its form and habits, no very 

 precise notions were obtained until within the last forty years ; 

 and even now, the extant delineations are far from the truth, 

 having been taken from crippled prisoners instead of from 

 specimens free in their native deserts. The giraffe is by no 

 means a common animal, even at its headquarters. We 

 seldom found them without having followed the trail, and 

 never saw more than five-and-thirty in a day. A traveller 

 whom I met in the Cape Colony, assured me, before I visited 

 the interior, that he had himself counted eight hundred 

 giraffes in a single day ; and during his travels, had ridden 

 down hundreds. On my return, however, after a little cross- 

 examination, the number destroyed dwindled gradually down 

 to one; which solitary individual appeared, upon further 

 investigation, to have been been taken in a pitfall ! The 

 senses of sight, hearing and smell, are acute and delicate ; 

 the eyes, which are soft and gentle, eclipsing those of the 

 oft-sung gazelle of the East, and being so constructed that, 

 without turning the head, the animal can see both before and 

 behind it at the same time. On the forehead there is a 

 remarkable prominence ; and the tongue has the power of 

 mobility increased to an extraordinary degree, accompanied 

 with the faculty of extension, which enables it, in miniature, 

 to perform the office of the elephant's proboscis. The lofty 

 maned neck, possessing only seven joints, appears to move 



