CHAPTER XIII
MAMMALS OF THE SAHARA
Lacking the wings of the feathered world, the animal life of the Sahara has not the same highly convenient means of passing from place to place, when the necessity arises to evacuate exhausted feeding ground and find more favourable country. Therefore, if hard pressed, they move carefully, and only at certain seasons, and are apt to cling closely to favoured regions, where such are found.
Any real migratory instinct is, with a few exceptions, not pronounced in the animals of the Sahara, and by far the greater number remain closely confined within their natural types of country, even though these are impoverished and struggle for an existence is keen.
If, on a map of the western portion of Africa, we glance along a line from south to north, starting from Kano in Northern Nigeria, which is about latitude 12°, it is possible to get a rapid idea from the creatures of the country of the change from tropical regions to Saharan regions.
At Kano may be found that loathsome reptile, the Crocodile, and, in the same latitude, Lion; west of Katsina, Elephants, and scattered groups of Giraffe right to the shores of the Sahara in the bush country of Damergou.
The northern boundary of Damergou, which runs along the outer edge of the bush belt, may be taken to be about latitude 16°; and it is there, at the junction between bush and desert, that one finds the line of decided change. Curiously enough, as if to incite one to remember, before entering the desert, the good things that go with a bush-land, it is close to, and on, that very line that four of the most handsome Gazelle and Antelope of Africa are to be found at their best: the White Oryx, Addax, Red-fronted Gazelle, and Damas Gazelle.
All through the dry season—long, weary months among sun-withered vegetation—these animals frequent the margins of bush and desert; but when the rains of the Sudan set in they move out from the sheltered, fly-infested scrub on to the open plains, to enjoy a far-reaching freedom and the fresh winds of the boundless spaces. The Red-fronted Gazelle and Damas Gazelle are content with wandering at no great range beyond their permanent locality, but the White Oryx and Addax, which have strong nomadic instincts and ever move restlessly from place to place, wander right away north when driven from the bush. I have seen them in latitude 18°, and the footprints of Addax in the sand as far north as latitude 22°, while Tuaregs of Ahaggar report the same animal to be west of the mountains on latitude 25°. This is not altogether surprising in respect to the Addax, as a few are found south of Tunis and Algeria, but it may not always be realised that the main stock of the species originates in the bush-belt that pertains along latitude 16°, which forms the shores of the Sahara in the Western Sudan and, doubtless, it is the same line, away eastward, that is the chief habitat of the Addax in Kordofan in the Egyptian Sudan.
A MORNING’S BAG
DORCAS GAZELLE AND GUINEA-FOWL