THE ROAN ANTELOPE 99 



a native village on the creek, and before sun-up we 

 descried five giraffe (one a huge bull) browsing on low 

 thorn-scrub not half their own height. Besides these, 

 gazelles and big bustards adorned the plain, and during 

 the morning we struck spoor and sign both of elephant 

 and buffalo. The more open prairies were dotted with 

 herds of tttel (tiang) and, although these latter were not 

 included in our programme for that day, I was presently 

 tempted by an exceptionally fine bull, accompanying six 

 cows and calves, to essay a stalk. The seven tiang were 

 feeding up-wind, perpetually on the move, and grazing as 

 fast as we could follow. The bull constantly kept separate, 

 holding an independent course, often 200 yards away 

 from his consorts. These frequently altered their course, 

 or stood awaiting his leisure to rejoin. For a mile or 

 more I held on in pursuit, hoping to overhaul the laggard 

 bull. Then suddenly we sighted afar in a forest-glade on 

 our right, a big black beast whose dark pelt suggested 

 buffalo. The glass, however, showed him to be a roan 

 bull accompanied by two cows the latter, being in 

 sunlight, had not caught the naked eye. 



We, of course, at once transferred our attention to the 

 nobler game. At the moment the three roan were over 

 half a mile away, almost directly to leeward and the whole 

 intervening space bare open grass, devoid of covert, 

 though flanked by forest on either side. Baraka, my Arab 

 shikari, with strange indifference to wind, proposed a 

 direct stalk under these impossible conditions even 

 without risk of scent, access would have been laborious 

 in the extreme, a flat crawl over hundreds of yards. 



The singular indifference to the "wind" evinced by 

 native hunters (who are quite aware of its import) has 

 often struck me as inexplicable. It is possible that, in 

 this high-dried country, scent may be less widely suffused 

 than elsewhere my own hunting-days in the Sudan are 

 not long enough to gauge that point precisely ; but, in a 

 general way, I have satisfied myself again and again that, 



