THE ROAN ANTELOPE 
99 
a native village on the creek, and before sun-up we 
descried five giraffe (one a huge bull) browsing on low 
thorn-scrub not half their own height. Besides these, 
gazelles and big bustards adorned the plain, and during 
the morning we struck spoor and sign both of elephant 
and buffalo. The more open prairies were dotted with 
herds of tdtel (tiang) and, although these latter were not 
included in our programme for that day, I was presently 
tempted by an exceptionally fine bull, accompanying six 
cows and calves, to essay a stalk. The seven tiang were 
feeding up-wind, perpetually on the move, and grazing as 
fast as we could follow. The bull constantly kept separate, 
holding an independent course, often 200 yards away 
from his consorts. These frequently altered their course, 
or stood awaiting his leisure to rejoin. For a mile or 
more I held on in pursuit, hoping to overhaul the laggard 
bull. Then suddenly we sighted afar in a forest-glade on 
our right, a big black beast whose dark pelt suggested 
buffalo. The glass, however, showed him to be a roan 
bull accompanied by two cows—the latter, being in 
sunlight, had not caught the naked eye. 
We, of course, at once transferred our attention to the 
nobler game. At the moment the three roan were over 
half a mile away, almost directly to leeward and the whole 
intervening space bare—open grass, devoid of covert, 
though flanked by forest on either side. Baraka, my Arab 
shikari, with strange indifference to wind, proposed a 
direct stalk under these impossible conditions — even 
without risk of scent, access would have been laborious 
in the extreme, a flat crawl over hundreds of yards. 
The singular indifference to the “wind” evinced by 
native hunters (who are quite aware of its import) has 
often struck me as inexplicable. It is possible that, in 
this high-dried country, scent may be less widely suffused 
than elsewhere—my own hunting-days in the Sudan are 
not long enough to gauge that point precisely; but, in a 
general way, I have satisfied myself again and again that, 
