West African Hartebeest 



J 39 



exceedingly ungainly, but even at the latter gait it can easily outpace a 

 man mounted upon the best native pony. But, when thoroughly alarmed, 

 it stretches itself out close to the ground, and for a mile can maintain a 

 really tremendous speed. Its movements are so deceptive that unless one 

 has galloped alongside or behind it, or watched it make a given distance, 

 one could never realise the speed to which it can attain. I have sprinted 

 a fine pony alongside one for some 400 yards. When at its quiet, ugly 

 canter it easily kept drawing away, until, becoming more alarmed, it laid 

 itself out, got its head well down, and simply sailed out of sight. On 

 another occasion I spent an hour watching from the top of a steep 

 precipitous hill of 900 feet in height the behaviour of a solitary bull 

 directly below me. My glasses were good, and I could discern every 

 movement. It browsed around a small open space, halted and scratched 

 itself, remained motionless, just twitching its ears for ten minutes at a time, 

 and fed on again, until, after an hour's pottering about within a circle of 

 a couple of hundred yards or so, it suddenly started off, first at a canter, then 

 at a gallop, and the distance it covered in a few seconds was almost 

 incredible. The country and the line it took was very familiar to me, and 

 when I saw it disappearing over the shoulder of a hillock, which I knew 

 to be a good 2000 yards away, I could scarcely believe that it was the 

 same animal that had but a few seconds before been feeding so serenely so 

 many feet below me. 



Besides its fleetness, a quality which tends to reduce bags is the extreme 

 tenacity of life shown by this hartebeest. Sometimes it appears quite 

 impossible to drop the beast, and one gets quite sick with one's self at the 

 amount of lead it occasionally receives before it will give up the battle for 

 life. It seems to be able to stand being riddled through and through, and 

 yet keep up the hobbling out of shot. I have tracked one with four 

 bullets in it, and going on only three legs, for hours, catching sight of it 

 every now and then, until sheer exhaustion has compelled me to give 



