502 Great and Small Game of Africa 



there adjacent, Portuguese South-East Africa, Mashunaland, Matabeleland, 

 the northern and western parts of Khama's country, the whole of the 

 northern portion of the Kalahari, Ngamiland, and Ovampoland, it is still 

 found more or less abundantly. Its most favourite country at the present 

 day south of the Zambesi is undoubtedly in the vast, waterless, giraffe- 

 acacia forests of the North Kalahari. Here, far from permanent water, in 

 country where even native hunters can scarcely penetrate, large troops of 

 giraffes still roam. In this, the most waterless portion of South Africa, 

 giraffes have the faculty of being able to exist for long periods — six or 

 seven months at a time — without drinking. This faculty they share with 

 the eland, the gemsbuck, hartebeest, duiker, and steinbok, all of which are 

 to be found ranging these dry and remote solitudes during the months of 

 African winter, when not a drop of surface water is to be found over 

 hundreds of miles of country. In the old days, before firearms were 

 introduced, I am inclined to think that the giraffe, far more often than at 

 the present time, was to be found upon open plains, wandering from one 

 piece of forest country to another. Since firearms and hunting horses 

 were introduced — especially the latter — the destruction of these magnificent 

 creatures has proceeded much more rapidly than of old. Even although 

 the hunter be armed with the finest weapons of precision, the giraffe, from 

 its extraordinary powers of sight, hearing, and scent, its towering height, 

 wide field of vision, and its incessant watchfulness, is not by any means an 

 easy animal to approach and bag on foot. In Central and East Africa, 

 where horses are seldom acclimatised, comparatively few of these animals 

 are destroyed, as compared with the slaughter that has for many years 

 been going forward in South Africa, where horses have for a couple of 

 generations past been freely employed. In addition to the difficulties of 

 approaching these suspicious and most wary animals, stalking on foot is, in 

 a tropical climate, sufficiently exhausting work, and only the hardiest and 

 most enthusiastic of English sportsmen are to be found regularly pursuing 



