Scribner’s Magazine 
VOL. XLVII MAY, 1910 NO. 5 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS* 
AN ACCOUNT OF THE AFRICAN WANDERINGS OF AN AMERICAN 
HUNTER-NATURALIST 
BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
Illustrations from photographs by Kermit Roosevelt and other members 
OF THE EXPEDITION 
VIII.—TO LAKE NAIVASHA. 
flROM this camp we turned 
d north toward Lake Nai- 
| vasha. 
The Sotik country through 
I which we had hunted was 
sorely stricken by drought. 
The grass was short and withered and most 
of the waterholes were drying up, while 
both the game and the flocks and herds of 
the nomad Masai gathered round the 
watercourses in which there were still occa¬ 
sional muddy pools, and grazed their neigh¬ 
borhood bare of pasturage. It was an un¬ 
ceasing pleasure to watch the ways of the 
game and to study their varying habits. 
Where there was a river from which to 
drink or where there were many pools, the 
different kinds of buck, and the zebra, 
showed comparatively little timidity about 
drinking, and came boldly down to the 
water’s edge, sometimes in broad daylight, 
sometimes in darkness. But where the 
pools were few they never approached one 
without feeling panic dread of their great 
enemy the lion, who, they knew well, liked 
to lurk around their drinking places. At 
such a pool I once saw a herd of zebras 
come to water at nightfall. They stood 
motionless some distance off; then they 
* Copyright, 1910, by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 
slowly approached, and twice on false 
alarms wheeled and fled at speed; at last 
the leaders ventured to the brink of the pool 
and at once the whole herd came jostling 
and crowding in behind them, the water 
gurgling down their thirsty throats; and 
immediately afterward ofE they went at a 
gallop, stopping to graze some hundreds of 
yards away. The ceaseless dread of the 
lion felt by all but the heaviest game is 
amply justified by his ravages among them. 
A lion will eat a zebra (beginning at the 
hind quarters, by the way, and sometimes 
having, and sometimes not having, pre¬ 
viously disembowelled the animal), or one 
of the bigger buck at least once a week— 
perhaps once every five days. The dozen 
lions we had killed would probably, if left 
alive, have accounted for seven or eight 
hundred buck, pig, and zebra within the 
next year. Our hunting was a net advan¬ 
tage to the harmless game. 
The zebras were the noisiest of the game. 
After them came the wildebeeste, which 
often uttered their queer grunt; sometimes 
a herd would stand and grunt at me for 
some minutes as I passed, a few hundred 
yards distant. The topi uttered only a 
kind of sneeze, and the hartebeeste a some¬ 
what similar sound. TheC so-called ~Rob- 
erts’ gazelle was merely the Grant’s gazelle 
SPEC.AL Not.ce. -These articles are fuUy protected under the new copyright law in effect July xst, x 9 o9, which imposes 
