20 
African Game Trails 
branches, were bright green. The camel- 
thorn was completely armed with little, 
sharply hooked thorns which tore whatever 
they touched, whether flesh or clothes. 
Then there were the mimosas, with long, 
straight thorn spikes; they are so plentiful 
in certain places along the Guaso Nyero 
that almost all the lions have festering sores 
in their paws because of the spikes that 
have broken off in them. In these thorn- 
trees the weaver birds had built multitudes 
of their straw nests, each with its bottle¬ 
shaped mouth toward the north, away from 
the direction of the prevailing wind. 
Each morning we were up at dawn, and 
saw the heavens redden and the sun flame 
over the rim of the world. All day long we 
rode and walked across the endless flats, 
save that at noon, when the sky was like 
molten brass, we might rest under the thin 
half-shade' of some thorn-tree. As the 
shadows lengthened and the harsh, pitiless 
glare softened, we might turn campwards; 
or we might hunt until the sun went down, 
and the mountains in the far off west, and 
the sky above them, grew faint and dim 
with the hues of fairy-land. Then we would 
ride back through the soft, warm beauty of 
the tropic night, the stars blazing overhead 
and the silver moonlight flooding the 
reaches of dry grass; it was so bright that 
our shadows were almost as black and 
clear-cut as in the day. On reaching camp 
I would take a cup of tea with crackers or 
gingersnaps, and after a hot bath and a 
shave I was always eager for dinner. 
Scattered over these flats were herds of 
zebra, oryx, and gazelle. The gazelle, the 
most plentiful and much the tamest of the 
game, were the northern form of the Grant’s 
gazelle, with straighter horns which repre¬ 
sented the opposite extreme when com¬ 
pared with the horns of the Roberts’ type 
which we got on the Sotik. They seemed 
to me somewhat less in size than the big 
gazelle of the Kapiti Plains. One of the 
bucks I shot, an adult of average size (I 
was not able to weigh my biggest one), 
weighed one hundred and fifteen pounds; 
a very big true Grant’s buck which I shot 
on the Kapiti plains weighed one hundred 
and seventy-one pounds; doubtless, there 
is complete intergradation, but the Guaso 
Nyero form seemed slimmer and lighter, and 
in some respects seemed to tend toward the 
Somaliland gazelles. I marked no differ¬ 
ence in the habits, except that these north¬ 
ern gazelle switched their tails more jerkily, 
more like tommies, than was customary 
with the true Grant’s gazelles. But the 
difference may have been in my observa¬ 
tion. At any rate, the gazelles in this 
neighborhood, like those elsewhere, went 
in small parties, or herds of thirty or forty 
individuals, on the open plains or where 
there were a few scattered bushes, and be¬ 
haved like those in the Sotik or on the Athi 
plains. A near kinsman of the gazelle, the 
gerunuk, a curious creature with a very 
long neck, which the Swahilis call “little 
giraffe,” was scattered singly or in small 
parties through the brush,.and was as wild 
and wary as the common gazelle was tame. 
It seemed to prefer browsing, while the 
common gazelle grazes. 
The handsome oryx, with their long 
horns carried by both sexes, and their color¬ 
ing of black, white, and dun gray, came next 
to the gazelle in point of numbers. They 
were generally found in herds of from half 
a dozen to fifty individuals, often mixed 
with zebra herds. There were .also solitary 
bulls, probably turned out of the herds by 
more vigorous rivals, and often one of these 
would be found with a herd of zebras, more 
merciful to it than its own kinsfolk. All 
this game of the plains is highly gregarious 
in habit, and the species associate freely 
with one another. The oryx cows were 
now generally accompanied by very young 
calves, for, unlike what we found to be the 
case with the hartebeest on the Athi, the 
oryx on the Guaso Nyero seem to have a 
definite calving time—September.* I shot 
only bulls (there was no meat, either for 
the porters or ourselves, except what I got 
with the rifle), and they were so wary that 
almost all those I killed were shot at ranges 
between three hundred and five hundred 
yards; and at such ranges I need hardly 
say that I did a good deal of missing. One 
wounded bull which, the ground being 
favorable, I galloped down, turned to bay 
and threatened to charge the horse. We 
weighed one bull; it tipped the scales at 
four hundred pounds. The lion kills we 
found in this neighborhood were all oryx 
* Of course this represents only one man’s experience, 
wish there were many such observations. On the Athi i 
May I found newborn wildebeeste and hartebeeste calvt 
and others several months old. In June in the Sotik I sa’ 
newborn eland calves and topi calves several months ole 
In September on the Guaso Nyero all the oryx calves wei 
