242 IN AFRICA 



seen it, but any one would at once know without be- 

 ing told that a giraffe couldn't help being funny 

 when running. 



As a general thing it is difficult to approach a 

 giraffe. With their keen eyes and great height 

 they almost invariably see you before you see them, 

 and that will be at seven or eight hundred yards' 

 distance. From the moment they see you they 

 never lose sight of you unless it is when they dis- 

 appear behind a hill a mile or two away. 



When seen on the sky-line a herd of giraffe will 

 suggest a line of telegraph poles; when seen scat- 

 tered along a hillside, partly sheltered under the 

 trees, they blend into the mottled lights and shad- 

 ows in such a way as to be almost invisible. I have 

 been within two hundred yards of a motionless 

 giraffe and, although looking directly at it, was 

 not aware that it was a giraffe until it moved. It 

 might easily have been mistaken for a bare fork of 

 the tree, with the mottled shadows of the leaves cast 

 upon it. 



Along the Tana River I saw several herds of 

 giraffe, perhaps fifty head in all, but it was on the 

 great stretches of the scrub country that slopes 

 down from Mount Elgon that I saw the great 

 herds of them. One afternoon I saw twenty-nine 

 together, big black males, beautifully marked 

 tawny females, and lots of little ones that loomed 

 up like lamp posts amidst a group of telegraph 

 poles. Within two hours I saw two other herds of 

 seven and nine each, and every day thereafter it was 



