TO LAKE NAIVASHA 239 



switching of their tails, as if jerked by electricity. In the 

 Sotik the topis all seemed to have calves of about the 

 same age, as if born from four to six months earlier; the 

 young of the other game were of every age. The males of 

 all the antelope fought much among themselves. The 

 gazelle bucks of both species would face one another, their 

 heads between the forelegs and the horns level with the 

 ground, and each would punch his opponent until the hair 

 flew. 



Watching the game, one was struck by the intensity and 

 the evanescence of their emotions. Civilized man now 

 usually passes his life under conditions which eliminate 

 the intensity of terror felt by his ancestors when death by 

 violence was their normal end, and threatened them during 

 every hour of the day and night. It is only in nightmares 

 that the average dweller in civilized countries now under- 

 goes the hideous horror which was the regular and frequent 

 portion of his ages-vanished forefathers, and which is still 

 an every-day incident in the lives of most wild creatures. 

 But the dread is short-lived, and its horror vanishes with 

 instantaneous rapidity. In these wilds the game dreaded 

 the lion and the other flesh-eating beasts rather than man. 

 We saw innumerable kills of all the buck, and of zebra, 

 the neck being usually dislocated, and it being evident that 

 none of the lion's victims, not even the truculent wilde- 

 beest or huge eland, had been able to make any fight against 

 him. The game is ever on the alert against this greatest of 

 foes, and every herd, almost every individual, is in immi- 

 nent and deadly peril every few days or nights, and of course 

 suffers in addition from countless false alarms. But no 

 sooner is the danger over than the animals resume their 

 feeding, or love making, or their fighting among themselves. 

 Two bucks will do battle the minute the herd has stopped 

 running from the foe that has seized one of its number, and 

 a buck will cover a doe in the brief interval between the 

 first and the second alarm, from hunter or lion. Zebra 

 will make much noise when one of their number has been 



