206 THE HYENA— THE JACKAL 



beside me, I awoke at some time in the night, and 

 after a pull at my water-bottle, found my attention 

 drawn to two large and very luminous eyes ap- 

 parently gazing into the tent from a distance of 

 some 10 or 12 feet from the door. I fired promptly, 

 and missed the beast, which I ascertained by the 

 foot-marks the following morning to have been a 

 large hyena. No sooner had I made the dis- 

 covery than I also found that a fine sable antelope 

 head which had been carelessly placed in an 

 adjacent tree overnight had fallen and been taken 

 doubtless by my reconnoitring friend. Its re- 

 mains were discovered during the day with little 

 but the horns left whereby to identify it. 



The Side-striped Jackal is heard nightly 

 throughout the Zambezi valley, and although 

 there is no reason why the smaller black-backed 

 variety should not occur, I have nevertheless 

 neither seen nor heard of him. I have possessed 

 two or three of these small animals, which have 

 grown extraordinarily tame when reared from a 

 tender age. One of these, curiously enough, 

 became apparently greatly attached to a fox- 

 terrier which belonged to me years ago at Queli- 

 mane, and this oddly assorted couple would ac- 

 company each other all over the Consular premises. 

 The tame jackal is a not ungentle creature of 

 various shades of reddish brown, possessed of a 

 bushy, white-tipped tail, and is generally of a 

 somewhat foxy appearance. His distinctive 

 name is derived from the black and white stripes 

 which run laterally along the flanks, and are much 

 more distinct in some animals than in others. 



