The Impala 327 



hollow, is a thoroughly efficient weapon for shooting these antelope. 

 Their skins are very tough but soft, and make handsome mats and 

 karosses - F. Vaughan Kirby. 



The Impala or Palla 



In British East Africa 



Ndorobo Name, Darageti ; Swahili Name, Nswala 



The impala or palla is a medium-sized buck of a dark red colour, with 

 white belly. A large ram may probably weigh, entire, about 160 lbs. 

 I think they run larger in South Africa, although the heads there are not 

 so fine. 



The species has a wide range in East Central Africa, but its distribution 

 is very patchy and it occurs only here and there in localities where the 

 conditions are favourable to its habits. Those conditions commonly are — 

 pretty dense bush or scrub, to retreat to when disturbed, or to lie up in 

 during the hottest part of the day ; " park-like " tracts or open glades to 

 feed in ; and water within reach. It is nowhere found in anything 

 approaching to the numbers that were formerly to be seen in some parts of 

 South -East Africa, where immense herds were common, and where, as 

 the natives used graphically to express it, the whole bush would some- 

 times become red with them ; nor, so far as I know, does it anywhere 

 occur continuously over any wide extent of country. But in small parties 

 — herds of 10, 20, 30, 40, or perhaps 50, but rarely, I think, more, 

 though Jackson records having seen as many as 150 together — it is 

 scattered here and there over the country from within about 50 miles 

 of the coast (as on the edge of the Taru desert), through Masailand 

 up to the basin of Lake Victoria Nyanza on the one hand, and on 

 the other from the banks of the Sabaki and Tana to the neighbour- 

 hood of the Lorogi and Matthews ranges. I did not, however, meet 



