256 
GAME—COMPARATIVE 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 antliill 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, wlnle 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 sj)irit. 
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 wliich the greatest amount of 
nervous influence is directed at the moment of receiving tlie 
shot, if we cannot be sm^e of the heart or brain, we are never 
ceidain of speedy death. Antelopes, formed for a partially 
amphibious existence, and other animals of that class, are much 
more tenacious of life than those winch are pm^ely terrestrial. 
Most antelopes, when in distress or pursued, make for the water. 
If hunted they always do. A leche shot right tlmough the body, 
and no limb-bone broken, is almost sure to get away, wlnle a 
zebra, with a wound of no gveater severity, will probably drop 
down dead. I have seen a rliinoceros, while standing apparently 
chewuig the cud, drop down dead from a shot iu the stomach, 
while others shot tlnough one lung and the stomach go off as if 
little limd. But if one should crawl up silently to witlnn twenty 
yards of either the white or black rhinoceros, tlnowing 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 Antilo'pe Vardoniij after the African 
traveller, Major Vardon. 
