ON AN EAST AFRICAN RANCH 59 



dred yards off. Once, when we had been vainly beating for 

 lions at the foot of the Elukania ridge, at least a thousand 

 zebras stood, in herds, on every side of us, throughout 

 lunch; they were from two to four hundred yards distant, 

 and I was especially struck by the fact that those which 

 were to leeward and had our wind were no more alarmed 

 than the others. I have seen them water at dawn and sun- 

 set, and also in the middle of the day; and I have seen 

 them grazing at every hour of the day, although I believe 

 most freely in the morning and evening. At noon and until 

 the late afternoon those I saw were quite apt to be resting, 

 either standing or lying down. They are noisy. Harte- 

 beests merely snort or sneeze now and then; but the shrill, 

 querulous barking of the "bonte quaha," as the Boers call 

 the zebra, is one of the common sounds of the African plains, 

 both by day and night. It is usually represented in books by 

 the syllables "qua-ha-ha"; but of course our letters and syl- 

 lables were not made to represent, and can only in arbitrary 

 and conventional fashion represent, the calls of birds and 

 mammals; the bark of the bonte quagga or common zebra 

 could just as well be represented by the syllables "ba-wa- 

 wa/' and as a matter of fact it can readily be mistaken for 

 the bark of a shrill-voiced dog. After one of a herd has 

 been killed by a lion or a hunter its companions are par- 

 ticularly apt to keep uttering their cry. Zebras are very 

 beautiful creatures, and it was an unending pleasure to 

 watch them. I never molested them save to procure speci- 

 mens for the museums, or food for the porters, who like 

 their rather rank flesh. They were covered with ticks 

 like the other game; on the groin, and many of the tender- 

 est spots, the odious creatures were in solid clusters; yet the 

 zebras were all in high condition, with masses of oily yellow 

 fat. One stallion weighed six hundred and fifty pounds. 



The hartebeest Coke's hartebeest, known locally by 

 the Swahili name of kongoni were at least as plentiful, 

 and almost as tame as the zebras. As with the other game 

 of equatorial Africa, we found the young of all ages; there 



