6 
African Game Trails 
miles, the tough beasts were still running 
as strongly as ever. 
All the morning I manoeuvred and 
tramped hard, in vain. At noon, I tried a 
stalk on a little band of six, who were stand¬ 
ing still, idly switching their tails, out in a 
big flat. They saw me, and at four hun 
dred yards I missed the shot. By this time 
I felt rather desperate, and decided for 
grunts and drove the others round with 
his horns. Meanwhile I was admiring the 
handsome dun gray coat of my prize, its 
long tail and long, sharp, slender horns, 
and the bold black and white markings on 
its face. Hardly had we skinned the car¬ 
cass before the vultures lit on it; with them 
were two marabou storks, one of which I 
shot with a hard bullet from the Springfield. 
Helping a donkey across the stream. 
once to abandon legitimate proceedings and 
act on the Ciceronian theory, that he who 
throws the javelin all day must hit the mark 
some time. Accordingly I emptied the 
magazines of both my rifles at the oryx, as 
they ran across my front, and broke the 
neck of a fine cow, at four hundred and fifty 
yards. Six or seven hundred yards off the 
survivors stopped, and the biggest bull, evi¬ 
dently much put out, uttered loud bawling 
The oryx, like the roan and sable, and 
in striking contrast to the eland, is a bold 
and hard fighter, and when cornered will 
charge a man or endeavor to stab a lion. If 
wounded it must be approached with a cer¬ 
tain amount of caution. The eland, on the 
other hand, in spite of its huge size, is singu¬ 
larly mild and inoffensive, an old bull being 
as inferior to an oryx in the will and power 
to fight as it is in speed and endurance. 
