360 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



and with the rifle I knocked off the heads of two guinea- 

 fowls. The last feat sounds better in the narration than 

 it was in the performance; for I wasted nearly a beltful of 

 cartridges in achieving it, as the guineas were shy and ran 

 rapidly through the tall grass. I also expended a large 

 number of cartridges before securing a couple of gerenuk; 

 the queer, long-legged, long-necked antelope were wary, 

 and as soon as they caught a glimpse of me off they would 

 go at a stealthy trot or canter through the bushes, with 

 neck out-stretched. They had a curious habit of rising on 

 their hind legs to browse among the bushes ; I do not re- 

 member seeing any other antelope act in this manner. There 

 were waterbuck along the river banks, and I shot a couple 

 of good bulls; they belonged to the southern and eastern 

 species, which has a light-colored ring around the rump; 

 whereas the western form, which I saw at Naivasha, has the 

 whole rump light-colored. They like the neighborhood of 

 lakes and rivers. I have seen parties of them resting in 

 the open plains during the day, under trees which yielded 

 little more shade than telegraph poles. The handsome, 

 shaggy-coated waterbuck has not the high withers which 

 mark the oryx, wildebeest, and hartebeest, and he carries 

 his head and neck more like a stag or a wapiti bull. 



One day we went back from the river after giraffe. 

 It must have been a year since any rain had fallen. The 

 surface of the baked soil was bare and cracked, the sparse 

 tussocks of grass were brittle straw, and the trees and 

 bushes were leafless; but instead of leaves they almost all 

 carried thorns, the worst being those of the wait-a-bit, which 

 tore our clothes, hands, and faces. We found the giraffe 

 three or four miles away from the river, in an absolutely 

 waterless region, densely covered with these leafless wait-a- 

 bit thorn-bushes. Hanging among the bare bushes, by the 

 way, we roused two or three of the queer, diurnal, golden- 

 winged, slate-colored bats; they flew freely in the glare of 

 the sunlight, minding it as little as they did the furnace-like 

 heat. We found the really dense wait-a-bit thorn thickets 



