THE LAND OF FOOTPRINTS 



the does always stood compactly in a herd, while 

 the bucks remained discreetly in the background, 

 their beautiful, branching, widespread horns showing 

 over the backs of their harems. The impalla is, 

 in my opinion, one of the most beautiful and grace- 

 ful of the African bucks, a perpetual delight to 

 watch either standing or running. These beasts are 

 extraordinarily agile, and have a habit of breaking 

 their ordinary fast run by unexpectedly leaping 

 high in the air. At a distance they give somewhat 

 the effect of dolphins at sea, only their leaps are 

 higher and more nearly perpendicular. Once or 

 twice I have even seen one jump over the back of 

 another. On another occasion we saw a heid of 

 twenty-five or thirty cross a road of which, evi- 

 dently, they were a little suspicious. We could not 

 find a single hoof mark in the dust! Generally 

 these beasts frequent thin brush country; but I have 

 three or four times seen them quite out in the open 

 flat plains, feeding with the hartebeeste and zebra. 

 They are about the size of our ordinary deer, are 

 delicately fashioned, and can utter the most incon- 

 gruously grotesque of noises by way of calls or or- 

 dinary conversation. 



The lack of curiosity, or the lack of gallantry, of 

 the impalla bucks was, in my experience, quite char- 

 acteristic. They were almost always the farthest 



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