570 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 
noticed the courage evinced by our horses, in the pursuit of 
game. Even when brought into actual contact with these 
almost unearthly quadrupeds, they evinced no symptom of 
alarm, a circumstance which may possibly be traced to their 
meagre diet. 
The colossal height, and apparent disproportions of this 
extraordinary animal, long classed it with the unicorn and 
the sphynx of the ancients, and induced a belief that it 
belonged rather to the group of chimeras with which the 
regions of imagination are tenanted, than existed amongst 
the actual works of nature. Of its form and habits, no very 
precise notions were obtained until within the last forty years; 
and even now, the extant delineations are far from the truth, 
having been taken from crippled prisoners instead of from 
specimens free in their native deserts. The giraffe is by no 
means a common animal, even at its headquarters. We 
seldom found them without having followed the trail, and 
never saw more than five-and-thirty in a day. A traveller 
whom I met in the Cape Colony, assured me, before I visited 
the interior, that he had himself counted eight hundred 
giraffes in a single day; and during his travels, had ridden 
down hundreds. On my return, however, after a little cross- 
examination, the number destroyed dwindled gradually down 
to one; which solitary individual appeared, upon further 
investigation, to have been been taken in a pitfall! The 
senses of sight, hearing and smell, are acute and delicate; 
the eyes, which are soft and gentle, eclipsing those of the 
oft-sung gazelle of the East, and being so constructed that, 
without turning the head, the animal can see both before and 
behind it at the same time. On the forehead there is a 
remarkable prominence; and the. tongue has the power of 
mobility increased to an extraordinary degree, accompanied 
with the faculty of extension, which enables it, in miniature, 
to perform the office of the elephant’s proboscis. The lofty 
maned neck, possessing only seven joints, appears to move 
