African Game Trails 
405 
ing the saises picked them by hundreds off 
each horse; and some of our party were at 
times so bitten by the noisome little creat¬ 
ures that they could hardly sleep at night, 
and in one or two cases the man was actu¬ 
ally laid up for a couple of days, and two of 
our horses ultimately got tick fever, but 
recovered. 
In mid-afternoon of our third day in this 
camp we at last had matters in such shape 
that Kermit and I could begin our hunt¬ 
ing; and forth we rode, he with Hill, I with 
Sir Alfred, each accompanied by his gun- 
bearers and sais, and by a few porters to 
carry in the game. For two or three miles 
our little horses shuffled steadily northward 
across the desolate flats of short grass until 
the ground began to rise here and there 
into low hills, or koppies, 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 
landscape 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 hartebeest and wildebeest, and smaller 
parties of beautiful gazelles. The last 
were of two kinds, named severally after 
their discoverers, the explorers Grant and 
Thompson; many of the creatures of this 
region commemorate the men—Schilling, 
Jackson, Neuman, Kirke, Chanter, Abbot 
—who first saw and hunted them and 
brought them to the notice of the scientific 
world. The Thompson’s gazelles, or Tom¬ 
mies 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 
underestimated the range. Then I shot, 
Vol. XLVI.— 47 
for the table, a good buck of the smaller 
gazelle, at two hundred and twenty-five 
yards; the bullet went a little high, break¬ 
ing his back above the shoulders. 
But what I really wanted were two good 
specimens, bull and cow, of the wildebeest. 
These powerful, ungainly beasts, a variety 
of the brindled gnu or blue wildebeest of 
South Africa, are interesting creatures of 
queer, eccentric habits. With their shaggy 
manes, heavy forequarters, and generally 
bovine look, they remind me somewhat of 
our bison, at a distance, but of course they 
are much less bulky, an old bull in prime 
condition rarely reaching a weight of five 
hundred pounds. They are beasts of the 
open plains, ever alert and wary; the cows, 
with their calves, and one or more herd 
bulls, keep in parties of several score; the 
old bulls, singly, or two or three together, 
keep by themselves, or with herds of zebra, 
hartebeest, or gazelle; for one of the in¬ 
teresting features of African wild life is the 
close association and companionship so 
often seen between two totally different 
species of game. Wildebeest are as savage 
as they are suspicious; when wounded they 
do not hesitate to charge a man who comes 
close, although of course neither they nor 
any other antelopes can be called danger¬ 
ous when in a wild state, any more than 
moose or other deer can be called danger¬ 
ous; when tame, however, wildebeest are 
very dangerous indeed, more so than an 
ordinary domestic bull. The wild, queer¬ 
looking creatures prance and rollick and 
cut strange capers when a herd first makes 
up its mind to flee from a stranger’s ap¬ 
proach; and even a solitary bull will some¬ 
times plunge and buck as it starts to gallop 
off; while a couple of bulls, when the herd 
is frightened, may relieve their feelings by a 
moment’s furious battle, occasionally drop¬ 
ping to their knees before closing. At this 
time, the end of April, there were little calves 
with the herds of cows; but in equatorial 
Africa the various species of antelopes seem 
to have no settled rutting time or breeding 
time; at least we saw calves of all ages. 
Our hunt after wildebeest this afternoon 
was successful; but though by velt law 
each animal was mine, because I hit it first, 
yet in reality the credit was communistic, 
so to speak, and my share was properly less 
than that of others. I first tried to get up 
to a solitary old bull, and after a good deal 
