ORYX, ELAND, IMPALA, ETC. 103 



liad wounded, but had unluckily been unable to come 

 up with it ere darkness set in. We therefore decided 

 to remain at this camp till we had secured our one bull 

 eland apiece, that being the limit allowed by law. A 

 grievous disappointment awaited us next morning. We 

 had both at this period been suffering from the severe 

 work entailed by the constant crawling after oryx, 

 hartebeest, etc., over the hard, flinty ground. Cuts and 

 abrasions, skinned knees and scarified forearms are the 

 normal condition of the white-skinned hunter in Africa, 

 but to-day (September 8) my brother was totally disabled 

 from walking, one knee being swollen to the size of a 



pumpkin. Accordingly, I had to start alone, W 



shouting after me in the darkness to get him a bull 

 also, should a double chance occur. Nothincj seemed less 

 probable, since after tramping more than two months 

 I had never, up to then, set eyes on a bull eland 

 at all. 



Ere the sun was well up I had reached some rocky 

 hills we called Leopard's-Kop (owing to my having 

 missed one of these animals here in our northward 

 march a month previously), and which were not far 

 from where my brother had seen the elands the night 

 before. Here we were watching: a concentration of 

 vultures, in the hope that they might lead us to his 

 wounded bull, when Elmi espied three elands afar. 

 Presently the vultures drifted beyond view, and we 

 then turned attention to the fresh game. The elands 

 were feeding in open forest of a kind of dwarf oak, 

 which still carried the tawny leaves of the previous 

 summer, distant two miles, and dead to leeward. This 

 necessitated a long detour — an hour's heavy grind ere 

 we gained the weather-gauge. Then some easy stalking 

 brought me within shot ; but so thick and rank was the 

 bush and grass, and so fatally did its sere hues and the 

 hanging foliage tone with the elands' tawny pelts, that 

 I failed to make them out before they moved. I now 

 saw that the trio included one magnificent old bull, a 

 massive beast of blue-grey hue. The exact character of 



