378 LARGE GAME. chap. viii. 



lopes on the hills to any one who had much regard for the 

 safety of his neck ; though, what between the ant-eater, 

 hyena, and porcupine holes on the flats, and the branches 

 of trees and thorns in the thorn covers, it is rather hard to 

 say which is the more free from danger. 



Perhaps the most beautiful of all the antelopes that I 

 have seen is the Nyala ; the white lines with which it is 

 striped being more numerous, more regular, and much 

 better defined than those of either the koodoo or the striped 

 eland, which, as far as I know, are the only two animals 

 which possess them at all. Unfortunately it does not 

 exist except in the low, fever-stricken districts, and I 

 have never seen it south of the Bombo range, about the 

 twenty-eighth degree of south latitude. It frequents the 

 densest thickets it can find, and is wary and difficult to 

 stalk ; indeed, I should fancy that more people have 

 caught fever by hunting this antelope than by the pur- 

 suit of any other animal in Africa, except, perhaps, the 

 elephant. Of course, as with most game, early morning 

 and evening are the best times during which to look for 

 it, and early dawn implies being wet through above the 

 waist by the heavy dew, and the subsequent drying of 

 one's things by the heat of the sun, a pretty certain 

 method of getting fever ; evening, on the other hand, 

 means not getting home till hours after dark, and breath- 

 ing during that period the fatal miasma which as soon as 

 the sun sets begins to rise from all over the great lagoon- 

 dotted plains where this antelope is chiefly found. 



Nyala-shooting and fever are all but synonymous, but 

 to those who have already had the latter, and with whom 

 the mischief, as regards injury to the constitution, is 



