1 68 Great and Small Game of Africa 



consisting of mimosa and aloes, with extensive open plains here and there. 

 In the bush were numerous old tracks of elephants, which in the rainy 

 season must be plentiful here. Lesser koodoo and a few buffalo were also 

 found in the bush, and, wherever there was a swamp, waterbuck were 

 common. On the plains and in very thin mimosa bush, during the trip, we 

 came across elephant, rhinoceros, the topi, oryx, Waller's gazelle, eland, 

 duiker, oribi, dik-dik, wart-hog, ostrich, and bustard. Wherever we could 

 find a pool of water on the plains, we left the river for a day or two and 

 camped by the pool. On October 1 8 I went out shooting on the north 

 bank of the river, the Somali side, and first saw two lesser koodoo females, 

 then two bucks of Waller's gazelle, which I commenced to stalk, as I had 

 not then obtained a specimen, they being only found in one part of the 

 Kilimanjaro country which I had not visited. Just as the walkri took the 

 alarm and made off without my getting a shot at them, I saw two antelope 

 coming towards me, which in the distance I mistook for impala, an 

 antelope not found by us up the Tana, but common round Kiliman- 

 jaro ; and it was not until I had fired at one of them and missed it that I 

 saw,'as they ran away with a heavy gallop like a hartebeest, that they were 

 animals quite new to me. I set to work to track them through the thin 

 bush, and had followed them a long way and was just thinking of giving 

 it up when I spied them on an open plain. They saw me at the same 

 moment and commenced to walk away slowly. The plain was so bare and 

 devoid of long grass that stalking or crawling was out of the question, so 

 I chanced a run in towards them as they were walking slowly straight 

 away from me, and luckily got within nearly t 50 yards of them before 

 they stopped and turned, offering a broadside shot. Sitting down immedi- 

 ately I shot off my knees, hitting behind the shoulder one which dropped 

 dead, and missing the other. The one bagged turned out to be a young 

 male, and, thinking that in all probability it would prove to be a new 

 species, I photographed the head on returning to camp and printed a 



