ch. ii] ZEBRAS 49 
within a couple of hundred yards before moving slowly 
away. On two or three occasions at lunch herds of 
zebra remained for half an hour watching us with much 
curiosity not over a hundred yards off. Once, when we 
had been vainly beating for lions at the foot of the 
Elukania ridge, at least a thousand zebras stood, in 
herds, on every side of us, throughout lunch ; they were 
from two to four hundred yards distant, and I was 
especially struck by the fact that those which were to 
leeward and had our wind were no more alarmed than 
the others. I have seen them water at dawn and 
sunset, and also in the middle of the day; and I have 
seen them grazing at every hour of the day, although I 
believe most freely in the morning and evening. At 
noon, and until the late afternoon, those I saw were 
not infrequently resting, either standing or lying down. 
They are noisy. Hartebeests merely snort or sneeze 
now and then, but the shrill, querulous barking of the 
“ bonte quaha,” as the Boers call the zebra, is one of the 
common sounds of the African plains, both by day and 
night. It is usually represented in books by the syllables 
“qua-ha-ha”; but of course our letters and syllables 
were not made to represent, and can only in arbitrary 
and conventional fashion represent, the calls of birds 
and mammals ; the bark of the bonte quagga or common 
zebra could just as well be represented by the syllables 
“ ba-wa-wa,” and as a matter of fact it can readily be 
mistaken for the bark of a shrill-voiced dog. After one 
of a herd has been killed by a lion or a hunter, its 
companions are particularly apt to keep uttering their 
cry. Zebras are very beautiful creatures, and it was 
an unending pleasure to watch them. I never molested 
them save to procure specimens for the museums, or 
food for the porters, who like their rather rank flesh. 
4 
