Scribner’s Magazine 
VOL. XLVII APRIL, 1910 NO. 4 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS* 
AN ACCOUNT OF THE AFRICAN WANDERINGS OF AN AMERICAN 
HUNTER-NATURALIST 
BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
) OTHER MEMBERS 
VII.—HUNTING IN THE SOTIK 
UR next camp was in the to our left some objects which scrutiny- 
middle of the vast plains, by showed to be giraffe. After coming within 
some limestone springs, at a mile the others halted and I rode ahead 
one end of a line of dark on the tranquil sorrel, heading for a point 
acacias. There were rocky toward which the giraffe were walking; 
koppies two or three miles stalking was an impossibility, and I was 
off on either hand. From the tents, and prepared either to manoeuvre for a shot 
white-topped wagons, we could see the game on foot, or to ride them, as circumstances 
grazing on the open flats, or among the might determine. I carried the little 
scattered wizened thorns. The skies were Springfield, being desirous of testing the 
overcast, and the nights cool; in the even- small, solid, sharp-pointed army bullet on 
ings the camp fires blazed in front of the the big beasts. As I rode, a wildebeest 
tents, and after supper we gathered round bull played around me within two hundred 
them, talking, or sitting silently, or listen- yards, prancing, flourishing his tail, tossing 
ing to Kermit strumming on his mandolin, his head and uttering his grunting bellow; 
The day after reaching this camp we rode it almost seemed as if he knew I would not 
out, hoping to get either rhino or giraffe; shoot at him, or as if for the moment he had 
we needed additional specimens of both for been infected with the absurd tameness 
the naturalists, who especially wanted cow which the giraffe showed, 
giraffes. It was cloudy and cool, and the There were seven giraffes, a medium- 
common game was shy; though we needed sized bull, four cows, and two young ones; 
meat, I could not get within fair range of and, funnily enough, the young ones were 
the wildebeest, hartebeest, topi, or big ga- by far the shyest and most suspicious. I 
zelle; however I killed a couple of tommies, did not want to kill a bull unless it was ex- 
one by a good shot, the other running, af- ceptionally large; whereas I did want two 
ter I had missed him in rather scandalous cows and a young one, for the Museum, 
fashion while he was standing. When quarter of a mile away I dismounted, 
An hour or two after leaving the tents we threw the reins over Tranquillity’s head— 
made out on the sky line a couple of miles whereat the good placid old fellow at once 
IT* Copyright, 1910, by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, began grazing-and Walked diagonally tOW- 
into foreign languagesrindudm^the'sfandLaviln" 8 a “° n ard the biggest COW, which WaS ahead of 
Special Notice. —These articles are fully protected under the new copyright law in effect July ist, 1909, which imposes 
a severe penalty for infringement. 
Copyright, 1910, by Charles Scribner’s Sons. All rights reserved. 
Vol. XLVII.—41 
