THE ROAN ANTELOPE 
105 
What was that? Simply good Baraka’s local rendering 
of Abu Uruf. Five minutes later, I learned that 
lesson when, among open scrub ahead, I espied some 
thirty majestic roan antelope. They, like ourselves, 
were seeking shade for their midday rest, lazily slouching 
along in groups of half a dozen or so. 
Presently the group settled in siesta beneath some 
low mimosas. The intervening space was a bare open 
glade, grassless, but sparsely studded with low bushes, 
and even these rapidly thinned out. The long flat crawl 
under a vertical sun was sufficiently exhausting, the 
naked soil actually burn¬ 
ing one’s palms, and ere I 
reached the very last shel¬ 
tering bush, I was utterly 
“pumpedout.” Moreover, 
I could not distinguish a 
single good head in all the 
crowd. The distance was 
300 yards, which is, of 
course, within extreme 
long-range shot ; but, right “Strolled sleepily across our Front.” 
then, some wood-sprite or 
kindly genius whispered the word to hold my hand, 
and I obeyed. The thin leafless bush overhead afforded 
precisely as much shade as the naked frame of an 
umbrella. 1 had just got out pencil and sketch-book, 
when Baraka touched my arm and pointed. . . . Oh, 
what a spectacle! Broad on our right, and no further 
away than the others, stood four magnificent roan bulls, 
unrivalled on all the African Continent! These till that 
moment we had not seen—champions all, and not an 
inch to choose between them. They were totally uncon¬ 
scious of danger, so for half an hour I strove to catch the 
lines of those imposing figures and their listless, lazy 
attitudes. 
Then one of the quartette—if there were a choice, 
