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AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



always stood, loaded, at the head of my bed. But on 

 neither occasion did he come near us. Every night a fire 

 was kept burning in the entrance to the boma, and the 

 three askaris watched in turn, with instructions to call me 



if there was any 

 need. 



I easily kept the 

 camp in meat, as I 

 had guessed that I 

 could do. My men 

 feasted on oryx 

 and eland, while 

 I reserved the 

 tongues and ten- 

 derloins for myself. 

 Each day I hunted 

 for eight or ten 

 hours, something 

 of interest always 

 happening. I 

 would not shoot 

 at the gazelles; 

 and the game I 

 did want was so 

 shy that almost all 

 my shots were at 

 long range, and 

 consequently a 

 number of them 

 did not hit. However, I came on my best oryx in rather 

 thick bush, and killed it at a hundred and twenty-five yards, 

 as it turned with a kind of sneeze of alarm or curiosity, and 

 stood broadside to me, the sun glinting on its handsome 

 coat and polished black horns. One of my Kikuyu followers 

 packed the skin entire to camp. I had more trouble with 

 another oryx, wounding it one evening at three hundred 

 and fifty yards, and next morning following the trail and 



Ivory-nut palms on the Guaso Nyero 

 From a photograph by Theodore Roosevelt 



