WHERE ROOSEVELT WILL HUNT 



227 



be black or purple with white bellies, and 

 are therefore most striking objects, es- 

 pecially when they stand, as they often 

 do, on the tops of low ant-hills, from 

 which they survey with their keen sight 

 all the surrounding country. When a 

 giraffe is thus poised on a mound like a 

 sentinel he is absolutely rigid, and moves 

 his head so little that the appearance of 

 immobility, coupled with the extraordi- 

 nary shape — the short body and the enor- 

 mously long tapering neck — give the 

 traveler the fixed impression that he is 

 looking at an unbranched tree-trunk 

 which has been blasted by lightning or a 

 forest fire.' 



But giraffes are not the only large 

 game on these glorious downs. Ele- 

 phants may be seen in great herds close 

 by, but they affect rather more the scat- 

 tered forest than the open plains. Where 

 you see the giraffes you see also numer- 

 ous rhinos in couples, male and female, 

 or a female alone with her snub-nosed 

 calf. The rhino looks a purple-black or 

 a whitish-gray as he moves through the 

 long grass, according as the light strikes 

 him. 



AMAZING SWARMS OF GAME 



It is a glorious sight, say an hour after 

 the sun has risen and the shadows are 

 beginning to shorten, to traverse this 

 grass country and see this zoological 

 garden turned loose. Herds of zebras 

 and Jackson's hartebeest mingle to- 

 gether, and in face of the sunlight be- 

 come a changing procession of silver and 

 gold, the sleek coat of the zebras in the 

 level sunlight mingling their black 

 stripes and snowy intervals into a uni- 

 form silver-gray, while the coats of the 

 hartebeests are simply red-gold. Dotted 

 about on the outskirts of this throng are 

 jet-black cock ostriches with white 

 wings, a white bobtail, and long pink 

 necks. Red and silver jackals slink and 

 snap ; grotesque wart-hogs of a dirty 

 gray, with whitish bristles and erect 

 tails terminating in a drooping tassel, 

 scurry before the traveler till they can 

 bolt into some burrow of the ant bear. 



Males of the noble waterbuck, 



strangely like the English red deer, ap- 

 pear at a distance, browsing with their 

 hornless, doe-like females, or gazing at 

 the approaching traveler with head erect 

 and the maned neck and splendid car- 

 riage of Landseer's stags. Gray-yellow 

 reedbuck bend their lissom bodies into 

 such a bounding gallop that the spine 

 seems to become concave as the animal's 

 rear is flung high into the air. The 

 dainty Damiliscus, or sable antelope, 

 with a coat of red, mauve, black, and 

 yellow satin bordered with cream color, 

 stands at gaze, his coat like watered silk 

 as the sunlight follows the wavy growth 

 of the glistening hair. Once black buf- 

 falo would have borne a part in this as- 

 semblage, but now, alas ! they have all 

 been destroyed by the rinderpest. The 

 eland still lingers in this region, but 

 seems to prefer the scattered woodland 

 to the open plains. Lions and leopards 

 may both be seen frequently in broad 

 daylight, hanging about these herds of 

 game, though apparently causing no dis- 

 may to the browsing antelopes. 



UKE) AN ENGLISH LANDSCAPE) 



On the different plateaus between the 

 Victoria Nyanza and the Rift Valley you 

 travel through a beautiful country, with 

 a climate like an English June all the 

 year round, with beautiful forests and 

 land obviously fitted for grain cultiva- 

 tion. There is much country of this 

 style in western East Africa, with no 

 sign of human habitation, all the natives 

 having been exterminated at one time 

 and another by intertribal wars. This 

 land is rapidly being settled by English- 

 men, Boers, and possibly a few Italians. 



The scenery between 7,000 and 10,000 

 feet in altitude reminds me so much of 

 the land I live in (the south of Eng- 

 land), and the resemblance is not even 

 entirely superficial, because you have 

 there so many familiar wild flowers, not 

 perhaps of the same species as in Eng- 

 land, but certainly of the same genus. 

 Of course, to anybody who has been a 

 long way from home in tropical Africa, 

 with the prospects of a tedious 7,000- 

 mile sea voyage between him and home, 



