372 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



queer diurnal rats, and bright blue-green lizards with or- 

 ange heads. Rhinos drank at this pool; we frequently saw 

 them on our journey, but always managed to avoid wound- 

 ing their susceptibilities, and so escaped an encounter. 

 Each day we endeavored to camp a couple of hours before 

 sundown so as to give the men plenty of chance to get fire- 

 wood, pitch the tents, and put everything in order. Some- 

 times we would make an early start; in which case we 

 would breakfast in the open, while in the east the crescent 

 of the dying moon hung over the glow that heralded the 

 sunrise. 



As we reached the high, rolling downs the weather grew 

 cooler, and many flowers appeared; those of the aloes were 

 bright red, standing on high stalks above the clump of 

 fleshy, spined leaves, which were handsomely mottled, like 

 a snake's back. As I rode at the head of the safari I usually, 

 in the course of the day, shot a buck of some kind for the 

 table. I had not time to stalk, but simply took the shots 

 as they came, generally at long range. One day I shot 

 an eland, an old blue bull. We needed the skin for the 

 museum, and as there was water near by we camped where 

 we were; I had already shot a waterbuck that morning, 

 and this and the eland together gave the entire safari a feast 

 of meat. 



On another occasion an eland herd afforded me fun, 

 although no profit. I was mounted on Brownie, the zebra- 

 shaped pony. Brownie would still occasionally run off 

 when I dismounted to shoot (a habit that had cost me an 

 eland bull); but he loved to gallop after game. We came 

 on a herd of eland in an open plain; they were directly 

 in our path. We were in the country where the ordinary 

 or Livingstone's eland grades into the Patterson's; and I 

 knew that the naturalists wished an additional bull's head 

 for the museum. So I galloped toward the herd; and for 

 the next fifteen or twenty minutes I felt as if I had renewed 

 my youth and was in the cow camps of the West, a quarter 

 of a century ago. Eland are no faster than range cattle. 



