IN AFRICA 
24,2 
seen it, but any one would at once know without be¬ 
ing told that a giraffe couldn’t help being funny 
when running. 
As a general thing it is difficult to approach a 
giraffe. With their keen eyes and great height 
they almost invariably see you before you see them, 
and that will be at seven or eight hundred yards’ 
distance. From the moment they see you they 
never lose sight of you unless it is when they dis¬ 
appear behind a hill a mile or two away. 
When seen on the sky-line a herd of giraffe will 
suggest a line of telegraph poles; when seen scat¬ 
tered along a hillside, partly sheltered under the 
trees, they blend into the mottled lights and shad¬ 
ows in such a way as to be almost invisible. I have 
been within two hundred yards of a motionless 
giraffe and, although looking directly at it, was 
not aware that it was a giraffe until it moved. It 
might easily have been mistaken for a bare fork of 
the tree, with the mottled shadows of the leaves cast 
upon it. 
Along the Tana River I saw several herds of 
giraffe, perhaps fifty head in all, but it was on the 
great stretches of the scrub country that slopes 
down from Mount Elgon that I saw the great 
herds of them. One afternoon I saw twenty-nine 
together, big black males, beautifully marked 
tawny females, and lots of little ones that loomed 
up like lamp posts amidst a group- of telegraph 
poles. Within two hours I saw two other herds of 
seven and nine each, and every day thereafter it was 
