50 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
the syllables ‘^qua-ha-ha”; but of course our letters and syl¬ 
lables were not made to represent, and can only in arbitrary 
and conventional fashion represent, the calls of birds and 
mammals; the bark of the bonte quagga or common zebra 
could just as well be represented by the syllables ‘‘ba-wa- 
wa,” and as a matter of fact it can readily be mistaken for 
the bark of a shrill-voiced dog. After one of a herd has 
been killed by a lion or a hunter its companions are par¬ 
ticularly apt to keep uttering their cry. Zebras are very 
beautiful creatures, and it was an unending pleasure to 
watch them. I never molested them save to procure speci¬ 
mens for the museums, or food for the porters, who like 
their rather rank flesh. They were covered with ticks 
like the other game; on the groin, and many of the tender- 
est spots, the odious creatures were in solid clusters; yet the 
zebras were all in high condition, with masses of oily yellow 
fat. One stallion weighed six hundred and fifty pounds. 
The hartebeest—Coke’s hartebeest, known locally by 
the Swahili name of kongoni—were at least as plentiful, 
and almost as tame as the zebras. As with the other game 
of equatorial Africa, we found the young of all ages; there 
seems to be no especial breeding time, and no one period 
among the males corresponding to the rutting season among 
northern animals. The hartebeests were usually insepara¬ 
ble companions of the zebra; but though they were by pref¬ 
erence beasts of the bare plain, they were rather more 
often found in open bush than were their striped friends. 
There are in the country numerous ant-hills, which one sees 
in every stage of development, from a patch of bare earth 
with a few funnel-like towers, to a hillock a dozen feet high 
and as many yards in circumference. On these big ant- 
