It is not often that one has the chance of seeing the nyógga-nyógga at such close quarters, and besides, it is extremely difficult to watch it without being noticed by it. It is so completely lost to sight in its surroundings, and is so extremely timid and watchful, that I have very seldom indeed succeeded in observing this splendid animal before it has itself remarked my presence. When I succeeded it was almost invariably towards evening when it had come out to feed. It is worth while to take full advantage of such moments, for the slightest disturbance instantly drives it away. And so it was now. It was not long before the two nyógga-nyógga, with their long necks stretched out, disappeared in the hollows of the broken ground that extended below the place where we stood. After this I caught sight of them a few times standing amongst the clumps of acacias, timid, surprised, and watchful; then the gazelles betook themselves to the protection of the wide velt, looking like mere points in the distance.
To me it seems as if the sonorous name that the Swahili language gives them, and also the softer name that sounds so sweetly in the mouth of a Masai,—“Nanyad,”—best and most fitly express their beauty, strangeness, and grace.
Again we turn our attention to all that is going on below us. This time it is the rhinoceroses, which have approached to within a few hundred yards of my post, that most engage our attention. We observe how they nibble here and there at the boughs of the Salvadora persica and other shrubs, and then again rub their rough hide or their horns against the strong trunk of a tree or on a block of stone. They have all this time been coming gradually nearer to the herd of gnus that we first noticed, and now at last they stand quietly on the level ground, only a hundred paces away from the old gnu-bulls which are acting as sentinels.
And now it is I myself who am the first to make out with the glass a third rhinoceros. “Wapi, bwana?” my companion eagerly asks me, and as I point out to him the place on the velt where I have picked the animal out, he approvingly confirms my observation with the remark: “Ndio, bwana, pharu mkubwa sana” (“Yes, master, a very big rhinoceros!”)
After some time we see that it is an old and unusually large bull; he, too, has gradually taken the same line as his two colleagues. Our observation proves to be correct, and we also remark before long that the first pair of rhinoceroses we had noticed is made up of an old cow and her nearly grown up young one.
More herds of zebras and gnus, and small troops of Grant’s gazelles and of impallah-antelopes have come into sight, and now they are joined by a whole crowd of hartebeests, which so far have kept themselves hidden in a side valley of the velt full of thick tall grass.
And now the moving mass of animal life is ever more abundant, more varied. I notice in the valley at the foot of my hill a string of guinea-fowl; how they hurry and scurry about, flutter up with sounding strokes of their wings, and then soon drop down again! And now my attention is attracted by a pair of Bateleur eagles, that wheel in the air, and enjoy themselves for an hour at a time playing on the wing. They probably have made their eyrie not far from this spot.
C. G Schillings, phot.
MASAI HARTEBEESTS (BUBALUS COKEI, Gth.) (THE “KONGONI” OF THE SWAHILI, “OL-KONDI” OR “OL-LUDJULUDJULA” OF THE MASAI).