^ A Vanishing Feature of the Velt 



indeed ; for to secure a good result you need plenty 

 of sunlight, besides the absence of trees between you and 

 the desired object. And when everything seems to favour 

 you, there is sure to be something wanting — very probably 

 the camera itself. Fortune favours the photographer at 

 sudden and unexpected moments, and then only for a very 

 short while. One instant too late, and you may have 

 to wait weeks, months, even years for your next oppor- 

 tunity. I would give nine-tenths of the photos I have 

 taken of animal life for some half-dozen others which I was 

 unable to take because I did not have my camera to hand 

 just at the right moment. Thus it was with the photo- 

 graphing of the three lions I killed on January 25, 1897, 

 and of the four others I saw on the same day, on the then 

 almost unknown Athi plains in the Wakikuju country. 

 Also with that great herd of elephants which so nearly did 

 for me, and which I should have dearly liked to photograph 

 just as they began their onrush. (I have told the story 

 in With Flashlight and Rifle.) I remember, too, the sight 

 of a giraffe herd of forty-five head which I came across 

 on November 4, 1897,^ about two days' journey north-west 

 of the Kilimanjaro. The hunter of to-day would travel 

 over the velt for a very long while before meeting with 

 anything similar. In earlier days immense numbers of 

 long-necked giraffe-like creatures, now extinct, lived on the 

 velt ; the rare Okapl, that was discovered in the Central 

 African forests a short time ago, has aroused the interest 

 of zoologists as being a relative of that extinct species. 

 Within the last hundred or even fifty years, the 

 1 On that occasion I had not at hand a telephoto-lens of sufficient range. 



555 



