144 LARGE GAME. chap. hi. 



seemed to be of my presence, he stood motionless, save 

 for his heaving flanks, a magnificent specimen of the 

 largest antelope in the world. His bluish dun colour 

 contrasted well with the black stripe that marked his 

 back and withers, while his shape, of which a prize ox 

 might have been proud, proved his age and condition. 

 His immense hump, and the deep dewlap which hung 

 below his knees, his great square quarters and straight 

 back, and the enormous breadth of his chest and neck, 

 on which his finely-shaped head almost seemed out of pro- 

 portion, all combined to show that he possessed capabili- 

 ties for putting on flesh found in no other antelope in Africa, 

 and rarely equalled among any animals in the world. 



As soon as I was steady enough I shot him, and he 

 fell on the spot, the first and last eland that I ever 

 fairly ran unwounded to a standstill ; though, as I exa- 

 mined his immense carcase, unwieldy from fat, and set 

 on such fine-boned slight-made legs, the marvel to me 

 was that he should have run as well as he did. The 

 distance we had come must, I judged, have been over 

 eleven miles, a great part of which I had to retrace 

 before reaching camp, and he had accomplished this in 

 so short a time, that although personally in the very 

 highest of training, I was completely done up, and felt 

 the effects of it for several days after. Like all old 

 eland bulls, his horns, though hard and thick enough, 

 were short and ugly, and not to be compared to those of 

 a cow or of a younger bull, and his proportions were nine 

 feet two inches from the root of the tail to the horns, and 

 six feet thick at the withers, making him the largest of 

 all that I ever measured either before or afterwards. 



