26 SAVAGE SUDAN 



at shoulder) demands fairly accurate rifle-practice. Both 

 these gazelles, moreover, carry relatively handsome 

 trophies (and the same applies to Heuglin's gazelle, 

 which replaces this pair to the east and south, by Kassala 

 and Gedaref 1 ) which, in master-bucks, seem almost dis- 

 proportionate to the sylph-like contours of their owners. 

 The best Dorcas heads exceed 1 3 inches in length, those 

 of Isabella reach nearly 1 1 inches our own best tape 

 12 and i of inches respectively. 



On open desert, where hunter and hunted are mutually 

 conspicuous, direct access is obviously impossible. To 

 secure a few first-rate heads of the desert-gazelles, the 

 one essential precept is patience meaning that, while 

 the stalker keeps within distant touch of his game, he 

 must patiently await the psychological moment when 

 its distribution or preoccupation or a more favouring 

 terrain, shall promise a chance of approach. This axiom 

 I endeavour to demonstrate at the end of this chapter. 



The waiting interval will not be wasted, since it affords 

 glimpses of the home-life of some of the most graceful 

 animal-forms on earth. Strange indeed it is, with such, 

 to witness their innate pugnacity, their frequent quarrels 

 and sham-fights tantcene animis ccelestibus irce? The 

 main grazing of these gazelles is upon the humble herbage 

 of the desert often at spots where not even the telescope 

 will reveal a vestige of vegetation ; but both Dorcas and 

 Isabella (as well as Heuglin's and the addra gazelle the 

 latter being specially partial to a big broom-like shrub, 

 the "marakh" Leptadenia spartium) also browse on 

 the frondage of desert-shrubs, such as kitteir-thorn and 

 mimosa, sapless and desiccated as such forage appears 

 to our senses. 



1 Heuglin's gazelle is a very distinct species, having (what no 

 desert-gazelle of Sudan possesses) the strikingly conspicuous black lateral 

 band from shoulder to flank that characterises Thomson's gazelle the 

 familiar " Tommy " of East Africa but which is lacking in the rest of its 

 genus. Heuglin's, however, is much more of a bush-gazelle. 



