88 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
and not the less so when with characteristic suddenness he 
bounces round with a grunt and scuttles madly off to safety. 
Wart-hogs are beasts of the bare plain or open forest, and 
though they will often lie up in patches of brush they do 
not care for thick timber. 
After shooting the wart-hog we marched on to our 
camp at Bondoni. The gun-bearers were Mohammedans, 
and the dead pig was of no service to them; and at their 
request I walked out while camp was being pitched and 
shot them a buck; this I had to do now and then, but I 
always shot males, so as not to damage the species. 
Next day we marched to the foot of Kilimakiu Moun¬ 
tain, near Captain Slatter’s ostrich-farm. Our route lay 
across bare plains thickly covered with withered short grass. 
All around us as we marched were the game herds, zebras 
and hartebeests, gazelles of the two kinds, and now and 
then wildebeests. Hither and thither over the plain, cross¬ 
ing and recrossing, ran the dusty game trails, each with 
its myriad hoof-marks; the round hoof-prints of the zebra, 
the heart-shaped marks that showed where the hartebeest 
herd had trod, and the delicate etching that betrayed where 
the smaller antelope had passed. Occasionally we crossed 
the trails of the natives, worn deep in the hard soil by the 
countless thousands of bare or sandalled feet that had 
trodden them. Africa is a country of trails. Across the 
high veldt, in every direction, run the tangled trails of the 
multitudes of game that have lived thereon from time im¬ 
memorial, The great beasts of the marsh and the forest 
made therein broad and muddy trails which often offer 
the only pathway by which a man can enter the sombre 
depths. In wet ground and dry alike are also found the 
