278 GAME.— COMPAKATIVE TENACITY OF LIFE. 



were so tame. With but little skill in stalking, one could easily 

 get within fifty or sixty yards of them. There I lay, looking 

 at the graceful forms and motions of beautiful pokus,* leches, 

 and other antelopes, often till my men, wondering what was the 

 matter, came up to see, and frightened them away. If we had 

 been starving, I could have slaughtered them with as little hesi- 

 tation as I should cut off a patient's leg ; but I felt a doubt, and 

 the antelopes got the benefit of it. Have they a guardian spirit 

 over them? I have repeatedly observed, when I approached a 

 herd lying beyond an ant-hill with a tree on it, and viewed 

 them with the greatest caution, they very soon showed symp- 

 toms of uneasiness. They did not snuff danger in the wind, for 

 I was to leeward of them ; but the almost invariable apprehen- 

 sion of danger which arose, while unconscious of the direction in 

 which it lay, made me wonder whether each had what the an- 

 cient physicians thought we all possessed, an archon, or presiding 

 spirit. 



If we could ascertain the most fatal spot in an animal, we 

 could dispatch it with the least possible amount of suffering; 

 but as that is probably the part to which the greatest amount 

 of nervous influence is directed at the moment of receiving the 

 shot, if we can not be sure of the heart or brain, we are never 

 certain of speedy death. Antelopes, formed for a partially am- 

 phibious existence, and other animals of that class, are much 

 more tenacious of life than those which are purely terrestrial. 

 Most antelopes, when in distress or pursued, make for the wa- 

 ter. If hunted, they always do. A leche shot right through the 

 body, and no limb-bone broken, is almost sure to get away, while 

 a zebra, with a wound of no greater severity, will probably drop 

 down dead. I have seen a rhinoceros, while standing apparently 

 chewing the cud, drop down dead from a shot in the stomach, 

 while others shot through one lung and the stomach go off as 

 if little hurt. But if one should crawl up silently to within twen- 

 ty yards either of the white or black rhinoceros, throwing up a 

 pinch of dust every now and then, to find out that the anxiety 

 to keep the body concealed by the bushes has not led him to 



* I propose to name this new species Antilope Vardonii, after the African travel- 

 er, Major Vardon. 



