200 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
Sotik the topis all seemed to have calves of about the same 
age, as if born from four to six months earlier; the young 
of the other game were of every age. The males of all the 
antelope fought much among themselves. The gazelle 
bucks of both species would face one another, their heads 
between the forelegs and the horns level with the ground, 
and each would punch his opponent until the hair flew. 
Watching the game, one was struck by the intensity and 
the evanescence of their emotions. Civilized man now 
usually passes his life under conditions which eliminate 
the intensity of terror felt by his ancestors when death by 
violence was their normal end, and threatened them during 
every hour of the day and night. It is only in nightmares 
that the average dweller in civilized countries now under¬ 
goes the hideous horror which was the regular and frequent 
portion of his ages-vanished forefathers, and which is still 
an everyday incident in the lives of most wild creatures. 
But the dread is short-lived, and its horror vanishes with 
instantaneous rapidity. In these wilds the game dreaded 
the lion and the other flesh-eating beasts rather than man. 
We saw innumerable kills of all the buck, and of zebra, 
the neck being usually dislocated, and it being evident that 
none of the lion’s victims, not even the truculent wilde¬ 
beest or huge eland, had been able to make any fight against 
him. The game is ever on the alert against this greatest of 
foes, and every herd, almost every individual, is in immi¬ 
nent and deadly peril every few days or nights, and of course 
suffers in addition from countless false alarms. But no 
sooner is the danger over than the animals resume their 
feeding, or love making, or their fighting among themselves. 
Two bucks will do battle the minute the herd has stopped 
