THE STEINBOK 
the bucks and does living apart except during the mating season. Only 
one fawn is born at one time — at least, as a rule. Although steinboks 
become wild and wary where much persecuted, they are very tame, and 
will allow a very close approach before taking alarm in parts of the country 
where they have not been much disturbed. I have seen them walking 
about and feeding at all times of day; but, as a rule, like most other 
wild creatures, they lie up in the shade of a bush or tussock of grass 
during the heat of the day and feed in the early morning and evening. 
When chased by dogs, steinboks show great speed and endurance, and 
used to give good sport when hunted with the pack of foxhounds which was 
formerly kept up at Mafeking in Bechuanaland. In the Kimberley district 
they were usually coursed by greyhounds. Once as I was walking along a 
wagon track in a rather thickly bushed district in South Africa, a steinbok 
crossed some twenty yards in front of me, and I could see that it was in 
the last stage of exhaustion, as it held its mouth open and seemed all 
hunched up. As I knew that some animal was chasing it, I stood where I 
was, and almost immediately a jackal crossed the wagon road at a gallop, 
with its nose near the ground, and evidently on the steinbok’s track. It 
must have been on the little antelope’s trail for a long time, and had 
nearly tired it out, and I have no doubt that it ran into and killed it soon 
after it passed in front of me. 
