3 o8 THE LAND OF THE LION 



their African cousins do nothing of the sort. The birds old 

 and young run hither and thither. The water-course is not 

 to be attempted; father and mother might get over, but the 

 tender bodies of the chicks could not endure the thorn 

 bushes or the sharp rocks. Presently the hen rushes off to 

 our left, but the cock is not of her mind at all. He chooses 

 a braver and, as it turns out, a wiser course. In some way 

 or other he impresses his will on his eight frightened children. 

 Led by the boldest chick, they form a "line ahead" and 

 with their pretty brown fluffy wings half spread sail steadily 

 by us, keeping distance as though they were a line of battle- 

 ships, the cock in the rear. Then when the father realizes 

 how close his brood must come to us in passing, he deliber- 

 ately leaves the rear of the family column and splendidly 

 sails along between the enemy and his children. He seemed 

 to look right into my face as he went by, not thirty yards 

 away. It was a rare and beautiful sight. 



But the morning was not over yet, and I was to 

 have another and a very near sight of an animal that always 

 seems to me one of the most attractive in Africa. 



I never care to shoot a giraffe. As a specimen he is 

 unnatural unless mounted as he stands, and standing he 

 would look uncouth unless one found him some such place 

 to stand in as the Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington. 

 (He would look better there, by the way, than some of the 

 things now in it!) 



The giraffe is too old to shoot; no one can tell how old he 

 is, much older than the elephant. And no one would think 

 of shooting an elephant were he not prodigiously destructive 

 to the farmer and were his tusks not worth a great deal of 

 money. But the giraffe is perfectly harmless, he was never 

 known to hurt anyone, and he gets his living off the upper 

 boughs of thorn trees, which no one can reach but himself, 

 and nobody else would eat if he could reach them. 



To see his beautifully mottled skin towering up among 



