122 ANIMAL LIFE IN AFRICA 



a fight once took place between a three -parts -grown ox 

 and the young eland bull, in which the former proved no 

 match for his adversary, who, getting his head down 

 very low, brought his long horns up with a jerk, and 

 cut the ox rather badly about the head and neck, speedily 

 putting him to flight. The same success did not attend 

 him, how r ever, when he once became too familiar with one 

 of the horses, and so great became thenceforth his respect 

 for the heels of those animals that Alfonso has since 

 begun to edge off the moment a horse appears in the 

 distance. 



THE BONGO. This fine antelope extends through the 

 forest regions of Central Africa from Sierra Leone and 

 Liberia on the west, to the Kikuyu escarpment of British 

 East Africa on the east. It agrees with the elands in 

 that both sexes possess horns. Owing to its fondness 

 for the very densest forest, very few of these animals 

 have yet been shot by white hunters. In East Africa 

 four only had been killed thus up to the middle of 1910 ; 

 namely a female by Captain Stigand, a female and a 

 young male by Mr. Kermit Roosevelt, and finally a full- 

 grown male by the late Mr. George Grey of Rhodesian 

 fame, whose widely regretted death, while lion hunting 

 in East Africa, occurred recently. Mr. Grey told me 

 that he got his bongo the first day out. After following 

 the tracks for several hours he saw a patch of red through 

 the bush at twenty-five yards distance, and, firing quickly, 

 found that he had shot a big bull through the shoulder. 

 In bongo hunting not only must patience, skill in following 

 spoor, and quick accuracy, should a fleeting chance 

 present itself, be present, but the lucky star must be 

 temporarily in the ascendant. The forest is so dense, 

 and the wind sometimes so treacherous, that a man may 

 get up again and again to very close quarters only to 



