One of these rambles into the woods led to a singular hunting adventure, which could only occur in Central Africa. I had been sitting crouched up for half an hour or more under the shade of a butter-tree, in the midst of some tall grass, and, engaged in the dissection of my plants, I had quite forgotten where I was. My three attendants were enjoying, as they were accustomed, a peaceful doze; stillness reigned so supreme in the solitude that one could almost hear the tread of every emmet on the soil, as backwards and forwards it hurried to the laboratory within its hill. All at once a huge shadow came in sight, and looking up I saw, just within pistol-range, the great form of a buck antelope. I was struck as much with admiration as with surprise: the creature had seemed to come suddenly from the earth. My heart fluttered at the apparition, but I could not be otherwise than sensible of its beauty. It was a specimen of the bastard gems-bok (Antilope leucophæa). Except on the belly, which was white, its long hair was all of a brownish grey. It carried its head erect; its ears were long and pointed; its horns massive and very long; its black legs going off into white fetlocks. A stiff mane of bright brown crested its curved neck, and reached to its withers. It had a tail like the giraffe, with which it wisped off the flies—a tuft of hair of about nine inches in length appended to a long slim stem. There it stood, majestically, I might say, like a stately buffalo when it surveys the region all around before it trusts itself to feed. There it stood, in an attitude at once commanding and defiant. Whenever it moved the grass crackled beneath its tread, and ere long it shifted its place again and turned its full face towards me. I cautiously reached out my hand for a rifle that was lying near me, pushed back the guard, and, at the next movement of the beast, hit it with a ball right upon the shoulder-blade from a distance of about twenty paces. The creature reared itself up, then paused an instant, staggered, and let its head sink down as if amazed. I was just about to get hold of a second rifle when there came a sudden crash, and, while I was still sitting, the animal had fallen just beyond the open portfolio which was lying outspread before me. Fortune had thus cast the noble prey right into my clutches.
Central African Bastard Gemsbok (Antilope leucophæa).
The sound of the rifle had hardly aroused my people, for this is a country where a stray shot does not attract attention for an instant; but my shout of surprise and delight brought them quickly to their feet. Some negroes were soon fetched from the neighbouring huts, who quickly completed the work of flaying and jointing the prey. Its head alone weighed 35 pounds. The natives informed me that the Mahnya (as the Bongo call this species of antelope) are among the rarest animals of the district, although they live as much in one quarter as another. They are ordinarily found singly and far separate from any other of their kindred race; and it is said that the largest of them will assail a huntsman, and are as furious when angry as a wild buffalo.
For a long time I was sorely depressed by the loss of my trusty Arslan, who had been with me ever since I left Berlin and had reached the remote wilderness. He had accompanied me through all the hardships of travel; and here I hoped that all dangers were passed, and now that the heat of the desert and the privations of water had been overcome, I had no fear of losing him; but he sank a victim to the treachery of the climate. My dog had seemed to me almost the last link that bound me to my home, and when I lost him I felt as though a bridge had been broken down which connected me with my native soil. It would have been a grief to me to lose my dog anywhere, but to lose him here was doubly sorrowful—here, amongst circumstances where he more than ever replaced the lack of a friend.
Nature, pure and free, must ever be a great consoler amidst all the disappointments of life. The stillness and peace of the plant-world brought ease to my troubled mind. To that world, as I turned then, I may be permitted to return now.
Nothing could more completely witness to the great variety of vegetation in my immediate neighbourhood than the fact that during my residence of five months I made a collection of almost 700 flowering plants, which I duly classified. It would not be possible in Europe during a whole year to gather so large a number if one were limited to the environs of a single town. From my own experience I am satisfied that, notwithstanding all means of intercommunication, it would be beyond the power of a botanist to secure anything like 500 species in an entire season. This would arise very much from his having to change his position, and from the varying time at which plants come into bloom: but here, in the land of the Dyoor and the Bongo, Flora seems to delight in crowding all her profusion upon the earlier months of the rainy period: the autumn is left comparatively barren, and even at the height of the rains there is little to be found which was not already in perfection some time before.
WOODLANDS.
The land itself seems decidedly less varied than in the most uniform districts of Germany. Woods indeed there are, and steppes; there are low grassy pastures and shrubby thickets; there are fields and coppices; there are marshes and pools; there are bare rocky flats, and occasionally a rocky declivity; very rarely, and only in the dry, out-drained river-beds, are sands to be met with; and from these ordinary characteristics there is little or no deviation.