128 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES CHAP. 



our horses started. The chase may have lasted for 

 a mile, though I think certainly not farther, and the 

 chetah never seemed to be able to get away from 

 us, and if he was capable of going at a greater pace, 

 I cannot understand why he did not do so. At the 

 end of a mile, however, Jameson, who was the 

 light-weight of our party, and who was, moreover, 

 mounted on a very fast Basuto pony, was close up 

 to the chetah, and the rest of us were perhaps thirty 

 yards behind him. Suddenly the hunted animal 

 squatted flat on the ground, and Jameson's pony 

 was then so close to it that it jumped clean over it. 

 The action of this chetah was exactly the same as 

 in the case of the one that Van Rooyen and I had 

 chased and overtaken in 1885, and in both cases 

 it was very remarkable how the hunted animals 

 suddenly stopped when going at a great pace and 

 lay flat on the ground in a single movement, as it 

 seemed. This second chetah was shot by Jameson 

 from his horse's back as soon as he could pull in, 

 and it never moved again after first crouching 

 down. 



Now when we read of the wonderful speed of 

 the tamed chetahs kept for hunting purposes in 

 India, it certainly seems very remarkable that in 

 South Africa these animals can be overtaken in a 

 short distance by ordinary shooting horses. 



In Jerdon's Mammals of India a very interesting 

 description is given of hunting with trained chetahs, 

 and I think there can be no doubt that in that 

 country these animals are able to overtake in a fair 

 course antelopes and gazelles which cannot be 

 ridden down, and whose speed surpasses even that 

 of greyhounds. 



Whether the African chetah has lost the great 

 speed of his Asiatic progenitors, and if so why, are 

 questions which I cannot answer, but the two 

 animals which were galloped after and overtaken 



