Sight in Savages. 175 



to all of us alike it presented no definite form, but 

 was merely something dark, standing against a 

 lioary background of tall grass-plumes. Our guides, 

 principally regarding its size, at once guessed it to be 

 an animal which they no doubt expected to find in that 

 place — namely, a wild horse. The other, who did 

 not have that training of the eye and mind for 

 distant objects in the desert which is like an in- 

 stinct, and, like instinct, is liable to mistakes, and 

 who carefully studied its appearance for himself, 

 pronounced it to be a dark bush. When we got 

 near it turned out to be a clump of tall bulrushes, 

 growing in a place where they had no business to 

 grow, and burnt by drought and frosts to so dark a 

 brown that at a distance they seemed quite black. 



In the following case the savage was right. I 

 pointed out an object, dark, far off, so low down as 

 to be just visible above the tall grasses, passing with 

 a falling and rising motion like that of a horseman 

 going at a swinging gallop. " There goes a moimted 

 man," I remarked. "No — a traru," returned my 

 companion, after one swift glance ; the traru being 

 a large, black, eagle-like bird of the plains, the 

 carancho of the whites — Polyborus tharus. But the 

 object was not necessarily more distinct to him than 

 to me ; he could not see wings and beak at that dis- 

 tance ; but the traru was a familiar object, which 

 he was accustomed to see at all distances — a figure 

 in the landscape which he looked for and expected 

 to find. It was only a dark blot on the horizon ; but 

 he knew the animal's habits and appearance, and 



