26 
SAVAGE SUDAN 
at shoulder) demands fairly accurate rifle-practice. Both 
these gazelles, moreover, carry relatively handsome 
trophies (and the same applies to Heuglin’s gazelle, 
which replaces this pair to the east and south, by Kassala 
and Gedaref 1 ) which, in master-bucks, seem almost dis¬ 
proportionate to the sylph-like contours of their owners. 
The best Dorcas heads exceed 13 inches in length, those 
of Isabella reach nearly 11 inches—our own best tape 
12 and 1 of inches respectively. 
On open desert, where hunter and hunted are mutually 
conspicuous, direct access is obviously impossible. To 
secure a few first-rate heads of the desert-gazelles, the 
one essential precept is patience—meaning that, while 
the stalker keeps within distant touch of his game, he 
must patiently await the psychological moment when 
its distribution—or preoccupation—or a more favouring 
terrain, shall promise a chance of approach. This axiom 
I endeavour to demonstrate at the end of this chapter. 
The waiting interval will not be wasted, since it affords 
glimpses of the home-life of some of the most graceful 
animal-forms on earth. Strange indeed it is, with such, 
to witness their innate pugnacity, their frequent quarrels 
and sham-fights —tantczne animis ccelestibus irce ? The 
main grazing of these gazelles is upon the humble herbage 
of the desert—often at spots where not even the telescope 
will reveal a vestige of vegetation; but both Dorcas and 
Isabella (as well as Heuglin’s and the addra gazelle—the 
latter being specially partial to a big broom-like shrub, 
the “marakh” — Leptadenia spartimn) also browse on 
the frondage of desert-shrubs, such as kitteir-thorn and 
mimosa, sapless and desiccated as such forage appears 
to our senses. 
1 Heuglin’s gazelle is a very distinct species, having (what ’no 
desert-gazelle of Sudan possesses) the strikingly conspicuous black lateral 
band from shoulder to flank that characterises Thomson’s gazelle—the 
familiar “Tommy” of East Africa—but which is lacking in the rest of its 
genus. Heuglin’s, however, is much more of a bush-gazelle. 
