YOUNG MASAI HARTEBEEST. I DID NOT SUCCEED IN MY EFFORTS TO BRING BACK A SPECIMEN OF THIS SPECIES.
The third day’s pursuit of the elephants also proved entirely fruitless. We did not even come within sight of a female specimen.
My guides were now of opinion that the animals must be so thoroughly alarmed that any further pursuit would be almost certainly in vain, so we made our way back as best we could in a zigzag course to my main camp, and reached it on the morning of the fourth day.
Most elephant-hunts in Equatorial Africa run on just such lines as these and with the same result, yet they are among the finest and most interesting experiences that any sportsman or naturalist can hope to have. The wealth of natural life that had been given to my eyes during those three days was simply overpowering. But if you have once succeeded in getting within range of an African elephant, all other kinds of wild animals seem small fry to you. You have the same kind of feeling that the German sportsman has when after a Brunft stag—he cares for no other kind of game; he has no mind for anything but the stag. But the elephant fever attacks you out in Africa even more virulently than the stag fever here at home.
C. G. Schillings, phot.
A HERD OF HARTEBEESTS (BUBALIS COKEI, Gthr.).
HARTEBEESTS WITH YOUNG.
