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causes annoyance to the sportsman by giving warning of his approach to 
the other Antelopes. 
“JT believe this Gnu suffered from the recent cattle-disease which during 
the last four years has decimated the Buffalo, the Giraffe, the Eland, and 
many other kinds of game, not affecting, however, the Rhinoceros, and 
certain other animals. ‘This disease seems to have killed off different classes 
of animals in different localities, attacking universally, wherever it appeared, 
the cattle of the natives. 
‘Thousands of hides of cattle that have died of this plague have been 
freely imported into Europe and America; the disease has travelled from 
Somali-land to Nyasa-land, and yet we do not know its nature. Some 
say it is anthrax, others that it is pleuro-pneumonia; but whether it is a 
disease that can be communicated by the dried hides of the diseased animals 
has not been ascertained. In Somali-land and Masai-land it has worked 
itself out, and it may stop short of the Cape Colony and not cross the 
Zambezi; but in the meantime it has decimated the African Game, and left 
its mark by changing the whole life of the pastoral peoples who depended 
on their cattle alone.” 
In British East Africa the Brindled Gnu (here called by the Swahilis 
«* Nywmbo”) is well-known to the sportsmen who have visited the happy 
hunting-grounds of Kilimanjaro. Sir John Willoughby and his friends 
found it principally to the north-east of the mountain “in large herds.” 
Mr. F. J. Jackson (‘ Big Game Shooting’) tells us it is more plentiful in the 
Useri district to the north-east of Kilimanjaro, and on the Athi plains to the 
north and west of Machakés, than anywhere else. In the latter place, on 
August 5, 1890, he and his companions ‘saw an enormous herd of 1500”; 
but this was “quite unusual, as they are rarely found in herds of more than 
from twenty to sixty.” But it is possible that some of Mr. Jackson’s obser- 
vations may refer to the following species, as when he wrote them he did not 
distinguish the two animals. 
Mr. Jackson gives the following advice to the Gnu-hunter :—‘‘ Wildebeests 
are amongst the most difficult beasts to stalk, owing to the open nature of 
the country in which they are found, and will probably try the sportsman’s 
patience more than any other Antelope. They will stand gazing at him, and 
will sometimes allow him to get within a range of 200 yards, if he pretends 
to walk past them, though in reality closing in upon them in a semicircle ; 
