132 
African Game Trails 
hundred yards—his meat was for our own 
table, the kongoni and the zebra being for 
the .safari. 
On another day, when Heatley and I were 
a photograph by Kermit Roosevelt. 
out together, he stationed me among some 
thin thorn-bushes on a little knoll, and 
drove the game by me, hoping to get me a 
shot at some wildebeest. The scattered 
thorn-bushes were only four or five feet 
high, and so thin that there was no difficulty 
in looking through them and marking every 
movement of the game as it approached. 
The wildebeest took the wrong direction 
and never came near me—though they cer¬ 
tainly fared as badly as if they had done so, 
for they passed by Kermit, and it was on 
this occasion that he killed the big bull. A 
fine cock ostrich passed me and I much 
wished to shoot at him, but did not like to 
do so, because ostrich-farming is one of the 
staple industries of the region, and it is not 
well to have even the wild birds shot. The 
kongoni and the zebra streamed by me, herd 
after herd, hundreds and hundreds of them, 
many passing within fifty yards of my shelter, 
now on one side, now on 
the other; they went at an 
easy lope, and I was in¬ 
terested to see that many 
of the kongoni ran with 
their mouths open. This 
is an attitude which we 
usually associate with ex¬ 
haustion, but such can¬ 
not have been the case 
with the kongoni—they 
had merely cantered fora 
mile or so. The zebra 
were, as usual, noisy, a 
number of them uttering 
their barking neigh as 
they passed. I do not 
know how it is ordinarily, 
but these particular ze¬ 
bra, all stallions, by the 
way, kept their mouths 
open throughout the time 
they were neighing, and 
their ears pricked for¬ 
ward; they did not keep 
their mouths open while 
merely galloping, as did 
the kongoni. We had 
plenty of meat, and the 
naturalists had enough 
specimens; and I was 
glad that there was no 
Kamiti. need to harm the beauti¬ 
ful creatures. They 
passed so close by that I 
could mark every slight movement, and the 
ripple of the muscles under the skin. The 
very young fawns of the kongoni seemed to 
have little fear of a horseman, if he ap¬ 
proached while they were lying motionless 
on the ground; but they would run from a 
man on foot. 
There were interesting birds, too. Close 
by the woods at the river’s edge, we saw a 
big black ground hornbill walking about, 
on the lookout for its usual dinner of small 
snakes and lizards. Large flocks of the 
beautiful Kavirondo cranes stalked over the 
plains and cultivated fields, or flew by with 
mournful, musical clangor. But the most 
interesting birds we saw were the black why- 
dah finches. The female is a dull-colored, 
