252 IN AFRICA 



several operators on its way to the States the word 

 "sing-sing" became "singing" and was supposed 

 to be an adjective describing the topi. Hence the 

 "singing topi." 



The American paragraphers also had fun with 

 the word "topi," for they thought a topi was a sun 

 hat much worn in the hot countries. From this 

 course of reasoning it was probably assumed that 

 Colonel Roosevelt had shot some kind of a sing- 

 ing sun hat, which was certainly enough to cause 

 comment. 



There are two kinds of waterbuck that the 

 East African hunter will find in the course of his 

 travels, the common waterbuck which we saw in 

 such numbers on the Tana River, and the Def assa, 

 or "sing-sing" waterbuck, which is found in the 

 higher altitudes up toward the Mau escarpment 

 and Mount Elgon. Both of these varieties of 

 waterbuck are beautiful animals, almost as large as 

 a steer, and with great sweeping horns that often 

 exceed twenty-five inches in length. In some in- 

 stances the horns have been nearly three feet long, 

 but the longest one that our party secured was only 

 twenty-nine inches in length. As a trophy for a 

 wall there are few heads in Africa more noble than 

 that of the waterbuck. 



In all our wanderings, during which we saw at 

 least two thousand waterbuck, we found that the 

 does outnumbered the males by ten to one and that 

 usually in a herd of twenty there would be only one 

 big male and one or two smaller ones. We also 



