26 THE PLEISTOCENE AGE ch. i] 
the ground began to rise here and there into low hills, 
or kopjes, with rock-strewn tops. It should have been 
the rainy season, the season of “ the big rains but the 
rains were late, as the parched desolation of the land¬ 
scape bore witness ; nevertheless, there were two or 
three showers that afternoon. We soon began to see 
game, but the flatness of the country and the absence of 
all cover made stalking a matter of difficulty ; the only 
bushes were a few sparsely-scattered mimosas, stunted 
things, two or three feet high, scantily leaved, but 
abounding in bulbous swellings on the twigs, and in 
long, sharp spikes of thorns. There were herds of harte- 
beest and wildebeest, and smaller parties of beautiful 
gazelles. The last were of tw r o kinds, named severally, 
after their discoverers, the explorers Grant and Thomson; 
many of the creatures of this region commemorate the 
men—Schilling, Jackson, Neumann, Kirke, Chanler, 
Abbot—who first saw and hunted them and brought 
them to the notice of the scientific world. The 
Thomson’s gazelles, or tommies, as they are always 
locally called, are pretty, alert little things, half the size 
of our prongbuck ; their big brothers, the Grant’s, are 
among the most beautiful of all antelopes, being rather 
larger than a whitetail deer, with singularly graceful 
carriage, while the old bucks carry long lyre-shaped 
horns. 
Distances are deceptive on the bare plains under the 
African sunlight. I saw a fine Grant, and stalked him 
in a rain squall, but the bullets from the little Springfield 
fell short as he raced away to safety; I had under¬ 
estimated the range. Then I shot, for the table, a good 
buck of the smaller gazelle, at two hundred and twenty- 
five yards ; the bullet went a little high, breaking his 
back above the shoulders. 
