HARTBEESTS AND GNUS 
number. The reddish color and general contour of these mounds bear in 
many cases so close a resemblance to the antelopes themselves, particularly 
when grazing, that I have frequently been deceived.” 78 
Every one speaks of the deceptive gait of these anima!s, which appear to 
go at a moderate rate until one tries to overtake them, especially on rough 
ground. Captain Swayne, whose ‘‘Field Notes” (Proceedings Zodlogical 
Society, London, 1892) contain so much that is novel and important in 
regard to the fauna of Somaliland, remarks: — 
“There is not always much game to be got at in the Haud; but a year 
ago, coming on to ground which had not yet been visited by Europeans, I 
found one of these plains covered with herds of (Swayne’s) hartbeests, 
there being perhaps a dozen herds in sight, each containing three or four 
hundred individuals. Hundreds of bulls were scattered singly on the out- 
skirts, and in spaces between the herds, grazing, fighting, or lying down. 
In the midday haze on the plains they look like a troop of lions. 
The pace of the hartbeest is an ungraceful, lumbering canter, but this 
species is really the swiftest and most enduring of the Somaliland antelopes. 
From their living so much in open grass plains, the hartbeests must 
subsist entirely on grass, for there is nothing else to eat; and they must be 
able to exist for several days without water. Hartheests are the favorite 
food of lions.” 
Among the better known are the tetel of the North (also Syria and 
Arabia); Coke’s, Swayne’s, Jackson’s, and Hunter’s of the East Coast 
region; the korigun of the Sudan and Senegal; the black-marked 
caama of South Africa, the one to which the name was first applied; 
the sassaby, konzi, and violet-hued, strikingly face-blazed blesbok and 
bontebok; but several of these no longer exist save in the remotest wilds. 
Associated with them are the grotesque South African gnus 
or wildebeests, which seem a composite or caricature of the 
whole hoofed-and-horned tribe. ‘The body and 
legs are antelopelike, but the head is so massive 
and broad as to resemble that of an ox. The muzzle is naked, 
the eyes small, with a gland beneath each, whence sprout long, 
stiff hairs, and the horns, which in old age form a helmet over 
the forehead, are broad, black, and shaped like an African 
buffalo’s, to which must be added the bovinelike circumstance 
not present elsewhere among antelopes, that the horn cores 
are honeycombed with cavities.” There were two species, 
283 
Gnus. 
