62 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



larger kinsfolk, are found scattered everywhere; they are 

 not as highly gregarious as the zebra and kongoni, and are 

 not found in such big herds; but their little bands now a 

 buck and several does, now a couple of does with their 

 fawns, now three or four bucks together, now a score of 

 individuals are scattered everywhere on the flats. Like 

 the Grants, their flesh is delicious, and they seem to have 

 much the same habits. But they have one very marked 

 characteristic: their tails keep up an incessant nervous 

 twitching, never being still for more than a few seconds at 

 a time, while the larger gazelle in this part of its range 

 rarely moves its tail at all. They are grazers and they 

 feed, rest, and go to water at irregular times, or at least 

 at different times in different localities; and although they 

 are most apt to rest during the heat of the day, I have 

 seen them get up soon after noon, having lain down for a 

 couple of hours, feed for an hour or so, and then lie down 

 again. In the same way the habits of the game as to mi- 

 gration vary with the different districts, in Africa as in 

 America. There are places where all the game, perhaps 

 notably the wildebeests, gather in herds of thousands, at 

 certain times, and travel for scores of miles, so that a dis- 

 trict which is teeming with game at one time may be almost 

 barren of large wild life at another. But my information 

 was that around the Kapiti Plains there was no such com- 

 plete and extensive shift. If the rains are abundant and 

 the grass rank, most of the game will be found far out in 

 the middle of the plains; if, as was the case at the time 

 of my visit, there has been a long drought the game will 

 be found ten or fifteen miles away, near or among the foot- 

 hills. 



Unless there was something special on, like a lion or 

 rhinoceros hunt, I usually rode off followed only by my 

 sais and gun-bearers. I cannot describe the beauty and 

 the unceasing interest of these rides, through the teeming 

 herds of game. It was like retracing the steps of time for 

 sixty or seventy years, and being back in the days of Corn- 



