468 AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 
plains—both those that were bare of everything except grass, 
and those that were covered with a thin growth of scrub 
and dotted with clumps of thorn-trees. We have seen it in 
the edges of forest. Its ordinary gaits are a walk and a 
slashing trot. If not pressed hard this trot does not tire 
the animal, and it will go for many miles. When closely 
pressed or much alarmed it breaks into a gallop. A heavy 
old bull cannot keep up this gallop for a mile without ex¬ 
haustion; but the cows, the lighter bulls, and the young 
animals run hard, although not as fast as the smaller an¬ 
telopes. Of all African game eland are the easiest to ride 
down on horseback. We have rounded up a herd quite 
as easily as we could round up old-style Texan cattle. 
It has one characteristic seemingly inconsistent with its 
great size and lack of speed, and that is its extraordinary power 
of leaping. When startled, and beginning a run, the huge 
cows, and even the bulls, bound like gazelles, leaping clear 
over one another’s backs. It is extraordinary to see such 
bulky, heavy-bodied creatures spring with such goat-like 
agility. It would seem that the mechanical reasons which 
make the trot their natural gait, and make their gallop 
slower and more tiring than the gallop of the oryx or harte- 
beest, would also limit their jumping powers; but such is 
not the case. They are heavier-bodied than the moose or 
wapiti, with huge necks and barrels, and pendent dewlaps 
and wrinkled neck skin; yet, for a few seconds after starting, 
they make high jumps of a type which wapiti rarely, and 
moose never, attempt. The wapiti, however, although their 
normal gait is also the trot, and although heavy wapiti bulls 
are speedily exhausted by a hard gallop, at least sometimes 
run faster than running blacktail deer—we have seen this 
