ORYX, ELAND, IMPALA, ETC. 
103 
had wounded, but had unluckily been unable to come 
up with it ere darkness set in. We therefore decided 
to remain at this camp till we had secured our one bull 
eland apiece, that being the limit allowed by law. A 
grievous disappointment awaited us next morning. We 
had both at this period been suffering from the severe 
work entailed by the constant crawling after oryx, 
hartebeest, etc., over the hard, flinty ground. Cuts and 
abrasions, skinned knees and scarified forearms are the 
normal condition of the white-skinned hunter in Africa, 
but to-day (September 8) my brother was totally disabled 
from walking, one knee being swollen to the size of a 
pumpkin. Accordingly, I had to start alone, W- 
shouting after me in the darkness to get him a bull 
also, should a double chance occur. Nothing seemed less 
probable, since after tramping more than two months 
I had never, up to then, set eyes on a bull eland 
at all. 
Ere the sun was well up I had reached some rocky 
hills we called Leopard’s-K op (owing to my having 
missed one of these animals here in our northward 
march a month previously), and which were not far 
from where my brother had seen the elands the night 
before. Here we were watching a concentration of 
vultures, in the hope that they might lead us to his 
wounded bull, when Elmi espied three elands afar. 
Presently the vultures drifted beyond view, and we 
then turned attention to the fresh game. The elands 
were feeding in open forest of a kind of dwarf oak, 
which still carried the tawny leaves of the previous 
summer, distant two miles, and dead to leeward. This 
necessitated a long detour—an hour’s heavy grind ere 
we gained the weather-gauge. Then some easy stalking 
brought me within shot; but so thick and rank was the 
bush and grass, and so fatally did its sere hues and the 
hanging foliage tone with the elands’ tawny pelts, that 
I failed to make them out before they moved. I now 
saw that the trio included one magnificent old bull, a 
massive beast of blue-grey hue. The exact character of 
