470 
AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 
of wapiti, deer, prongbuck, and mountain-sheep; but it is 
hard to dogmatize in such matters, for much depends on the 
cooking, the climate, and the surroundings. The eland is 
by preference a grass-eater, and is usually fat, which makes 
him a godsend in the African land of lean animals. We also 
found eland eating aloe leaves. When the country is so 
parched that the eland’s food consists of dry leaves from the 
thorn-trees, the flesh is poor and tasteless. 
On the whole, eland are warier than any other antelope. 
They are soft-bodied, and are disabled by a wound which 
would not cripple one of the smaller antelope or an American 
deer. So many trustworthy observers report that African 
antelope are tougher than the deer of the northlands that we 
suppose they must be right; in our own experience it hap¬ 
pened that we were not able to discern any difference be¬ 
tween them. 
We found eland in herds of from half a dozen to forty 
or fifty individuals, the two or three big bulls looming above 
the cows and young stock. We also occasionally came on 
bulls singly or in pairs. The very old bulls, called blue bulls 
because the hide shows through the thin hair, were usually 
solitary. They are so big and dark that we have known an 
entire safari mistake one for a rhino when seen a little way 
off in thin bush. Although so big, eland are less pugnacious 
than any other big antelope; why the eland, and to a less 
extent the koodoo, are so mild-tempered, when their small 
kinsfolk, the bushbucks, are such ferocious fighters, it is im¬ 
possible to say. Eland are easily tamed. Our own govern¬ 
ment should make a business of importing, taming, and train¬ 
ing them; and the African governments should do so at 
once. In a few generations they would be completely domes- 
