THE ATHI RIVER 217 



is obvious danger in going in witliin, say, 200 yards — 

 for a lion has a fine turn of speed for a short distance. 

 Nor will it be a simple shot, for hard riding will not 

 have steadied the hand for fine shooting at long range. 



Clearly, useful shooting-ponies are a first essential, 

 when the least delay in remounting must involve disaster; 

 the pursuit also presupposes a degree of skill in horse- 

 manship which, alas, in our own case was utterly 

 lackina;. 



A yet more scientific development of hunting-craft 

 enables the presence of lions far away to be detected by 

 the movements or position of the game on the plains. 

 Thus a wide gap seen among game otherwise distributed 

 regularly, is deserving of attention. This may, it is 

 true, be merely accidental — more probably not ; possibly 

 the gap may be caused by some hyenas finishing a 

 carrion meal. But it is always worth ascertaining if a 

 broad vacant space be not cleared by the tell-tale scent 

 of lions lying up to the windward thereof^ 



There is of course abundance of other game, besides 

 lions, on the Atlii. We observed waterbuck, for example, 

 coming out to feed every morning at dawn on the open 

 veld adjoining the river. These were the common " ring- 

 tailed " waterbuck, and one bull in particular appeared to 



carry cjuite a handsome head ; but when shot by W 



his horns only taped 22 j ins., by 8|- ins. in basal cir- 

 cumference, and 12 ins. between tips. In East Africa 

 this fine antelope never reaches the dimensions attained 

 further south. 



It was noteworthy that during the first half of January 

 we saw here neither zebra nor wildebeest — usually so 

 extremely abundant. But on January 20 a few zebras 

 appeared ; several troops showed up on the following 

 day, and after that date they became numerous. The 

 first wildebeest — two old bulls — were observed on 



^ So successful is our friend Mr. C. B. Perceval, Game-ranger 

 of British East Africa, in thus reading Nature's signs, that sundry 

 native hunters assert that he can " see lions " when lying asleep in 

 the grass at six or seven miles ! 



