256 GAME— COMPAKATIVE TENACITY OF LIFE. Chap. XIV. 



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

 easily get within fifty or sixty yards of them. There I lay, look- 

 ing 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 

 hesitation 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 ap- 

 proached a herd lying beyond an anthill with a tree on it, and 

 viewed them with the greatest caution, they very soon showed 

 symptoms of uneasiness. They did not snuff danger in the 

 wind, for I was to leeward of them, but the almost invariable 

 apprehension of danger which arose, while unconscious of the 

 direction in which it lay, made me wonder whether each had 

 what the ancient physicians thought we all possessed, an archon, 

 or presiding spirit. 



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

 could despatch 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 cannot be sure of the heart or brain, we are never 

 certain of speedy death. Antelopes, formed for a partially 

 amphibious 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 water. 

 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 twenty 

 yards of either 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 

 traveller, Major Vardon. 



