442 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



thick bushes, behaving much like our own yellow-breasted 

 chats; and a multitude of other birds, beautiful or fantastic. 

 There were striped squirrels too, reminding us of the big 

 Rocky Mountain chipmunk or Say's chipmunk, but with 

 smaller ears and a longer tail. 



Christmas day we passed on the march. There is not 

 much use in trying to celebrate Christmas unless there are 

 small folks to hang up their stockings on Christmas Eve, 

 to rush gleefully in at dawn next morning to open the 

 stockings, and after breakfast to wait in hopping expec- 

 tancy until their elders throw open the doors of the room 

 in which the big presents are arranged, those for each child 

 on a separate table. 



Forty miles from the coast the elephant grass began to 

 disappear. The hills became somewhat higher, there were 

 thorn-trees, and stately royal palms of great height, their 

 stems swollen and bulging at the top, near the fronds. 

 Parasitic ferns, with leaves as large as cabbage leaves, grew 

 on the branches of the acacias. One kind of tree sent 

 down from its branches to the ground roots which grew 

 into thick trunks. There were wide, shallow marshes, and 

 although the grass was tall it was no longer above a man's 

 head. Kermit and I usually got two or three hours' hunting 

 each day. We killed singsing waterbuck, bushbuck, and 

 bohor reedbuck. The reedbuck differed slightly from those 

 of East Africa; in places they were plentiful, and they 

 were not wary. We also killed several hartebeests; a vari- 

 ety of the Jackson's hartebeest, being more highly colored, 

 with black markings. I killed a very handsome harnessed 

 bushbuck ram. It was rather bigger than a good-sized 

 white-tail buck, its brilliant red coat beautifully marked 

 with rows of white spots, its twisted black horns sharp 

 and polished. It seemed to stand about half-way between 

 the dark-colored bushbuck rams of East and South Africa 

 and the beautifully marked harnessed antelope rams of 

 the west coast forests. The ewes and young rams showed 

 the harness markings even more plainly; and, as with 



