2 52 
IN AFRICA 
several operators on its way to the States the word 
“sing-sing” became “singing” and was supposed 
to he an adjective describing the topi. Hence the 
“singing topi.” 
The American paragraphers also had fun with 
the word “topi,” for they thought a topi was a sun 
hat much worn in the hot countries. From this 
course of reasoning it was probably assumed that 
Colonel Roosevelt had shot some kind of a sing¬ 
ing sun hat, which was certainly enough to cause 
comment. 
There are two kinds of waterbuck that the 
East African hunter will find in the course of his 
travels, the common waterbuck which we saw in 
such numbers on the Tana River, and the Defassa, 
or “sing-sing” waterbuck, which is found in the 
higher altitudes up toward the Mau escarpment 
and Mount Elgon. Both of these varieties of 
waterbuck are beautiful animals, almost as large as 
a steer, and with great sweeping horns that often 
exceed twenty-five inches in length. In some in¬ 
stances the horns have been nearly three feet long, 
but the longest one that our party secured was only 
twenty-nine inches in length. As a trophy for a 
wall there are few heads in Africa more noble than 
that of the waterbuck. 
In all our wanderings, during which we saw at 
least two thousand waterbuck, we found that the 
does outnumbered the males by ten to one and that 
usually in a herd of twenty there would he only one 
big male and one or two smaller ones. We also 
