254 , 
IN AFRICA 
The doe is not pretty, being thickly and clumsily 
built, with a heavy, ungraceful neck, hut the buck 
is like a painting by Landseer, noble, graceful, 
and beautifully marked with white and black on his 
dark gray coat. 
We didn’t kill many waterbuck, because there is 
no excuse for doing so except to secure the heads as 
trophies. The meat is so coarse and tough that 
even the porters, who seldom draw the line at eat¬ 
ing anything their teeth can penetrate, do not care 
for waterbuck meat except under the stress of 
great hunger. They do like the skin, however, for 
it is of the waterbuck skin that their best sandals 
are made. Consequently, when a waterbuck is 
killed there is a fierce scramble among the porters 
to secure portions of the hide for this purpose. 
The male waterbucks are savage fighters among 
themselves, and it was not uncommon to see big 
bulls with one horn gone or with both horns badly 
broken or marred as a result of the jealous strug¬ 
gle for dominance of a herd of does. 
The topi is something like the hartebeest, but 
much more beautiful and much more rare. It is 
over four feet high, with skin of a dark reddish 
brown, with a silklike bluish gray gloss. On the 
shoulders and thighs are bluish black patches and 
the forehead and nose are blackish brown. The 
under parts are bright cinnamon. We ran across 
this beautiful antelope only on the Guas Ngishu 
Plateau, although it is found in one or two other 
districts in East Africa. In all our weeks of 
