CHAPTER XXIV 
STRAY NOTES ON EAST-AFRICAN GAME 
I. On Certain Antelopes not met with 
Bongo. —Tragelaphus euryceros. 
The fact appears incredible that any large wild animal, 
carrying, moreover, a splendid trophy, should exist close 
by—as this does at Eld am a Ravine, within twenty or 
thirty miles of the Uganda railway—and yet defy our 
best sportsmen. And not the bongo alone, for in these 
same tropical forests of the Mau and of Laikipia there 
also lurks unseen and unshot the giant forest-hog, that 
has been christened (from some fragments of skin and 
bone obtained from natives) Hyloclioerus meinertzha- 
geni. 1 
The apparent paradox tones down considerably when 
one comes to see the chosen home of these two unknown 
animals. It is what is commonly described as “ impene¬ 
trable forest; ” and thereby, if language means anything 
at all, the mystery is explained at once. But is any 
forest impenetrable ? 1 should have doubted the 
possibility had I not myself seen these forest-jungles of 
the Mau. Penetrable in limited degree, slowly and 
laboriously, they may be ; anything beyond that must 
be only for the fullest vigour of youth, when keenness 
and physical power admit no bounds. That age, in my 
case, having already been doubled, the uncompromising 
1 My friend Mr. Rowland Ward writes me that one or two 
examples have quite recently (June 1908) been secured in British 
East Africa—one by Col. Watkins Yardley in the Kenya district, 
and a fine boar in the Mau Forest. 
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