AFTER ORYX AND ELAND—BARINGO 83 
beisa. There were not many—only nine or ten; and 
on the open prairie the task of approach appeared well- 
nigh hopeless. 
For days our best efforts failed. Then (on August 
27) I had the luck to find a pair, bull and cow, well 
within the fringe of mimosa-scrub aforesaid. After a 
stalk of about average difficulty I fired at the bull, but 
missed. This shot was taken through the horizontal 
branches of a thin thorn-bush, and as it was not much 
over 100 yards, the ball had perhaps been deflected. 
Not having seen us, the oryx, after one long burst, 
gradually settled down, and an hour later I came up 
with them again. They now stood on a perfectly open 
flat of hard, bare, sun-baked mud. Islanded in the 
midst of this was one patch of spiky aloes, twenty yards 
wide and three feet high. Getting this in line, I essayed 
that terrible crawl, 200 yards of cruel going, over brazen 
clay studded with flints and dwarf cacti, as bad as 
broken bottles. Yet the stalk succeeded. I have always 
attributed that success to a remarkable instance of mis¬ 
taken animal-instinct. Far out on the flat were grazing 
