78 
ON SAFARI 
elands about fifty strong, mostly females and young 
beasts, but including a single large bull whose brisket 
appeared to sweep the ground. They had not noticed 
us, and their onward direction indicated that they would 
feed past quite near. What slight wind there was blew 
in our favour, so we lay down in the deep grass and 
waited. Presently the whole herd filed past from left to 
right within easy shot. The big bull was, as usual, last 
of all, and came on very slowly, often stopping. Whether 
some breath of suspicion were aroused or not, it is 
impossible to say; but it certainly did happen that 
before the great bull had arrived opposite our position, 
first one small beast, then another, quietly dropped 
astern of the herd and so surrounded his majesty that 
there remained absolutely no point of his person on which 
we could get a sight. His massive stubby horns and 
the line of his back were the only indications of his 
being there at all. We could do nothing to avert a 
catastrophe, so lay still, and the elands passed out of 
the picture in the same slow, dignified order in which 
they had appeared. They simply faded away within the 
fastnesses of the Laikipia, and our efforts all that day 
failed to bring us again within touch of them. 
“ Next morning, skirting this plain towards the north, 
we first spotted a bull giraffe, very black, but as he was 
travelling faster than we could follow, we took no further 
interest in him. We then entered a glade which 
traversed the forest, and were approaching its outlet, 
when my eye caught something moving in the open 
beyond. Immediately thereafter the glade was occupied 
by the form of a pig, which for a moment of time stood 
gazing towards us—long enough for me to see that this 
was something quite out of the common in the pig line. 
Reddish-brown as to colour, with head shaped like that 
of a bush-pig, its dimensions were what arrested atten¬ 
tion. Whether by some optical delusion or not I could not 
say, but this pig certainly appeared to me to stand well- 
nigh as big as a zebra, say near four feet at the shoulder. 
It was gone in a moment. We rushed forward to get 
