Native name, Síg
The Síg or hartebeest was described by Dr. Sclater as Bubalis swaynei; his description and notes (P. Z. S., Feb. 1892) were taken from specimens shot and sent home by me. I was not the first to shoot the Síg, but mine were the first specimens submitted to scientific investigation.
The Somáli Hartebeest (Bubalis swaynei).
Length of horns on curve, 20¼ inches.
South of Gólis Range, and at a distance of about one hundred and twenty miles from the coast, are open plains from four to six thousand feet above sea-level, alternating with broken ground covered with thorn jungle. These patches of ban or prairie are the only kind of country where the hartebeest is to be found. Not a bush is to be seen, and some of these plains are thirty or forty miles in extent.
I first saw the Síg when coming on to ground which had not then been visited by Europeans, and found one of these plains covered with hartebeests, there being perhaps a dozen herds in sight at one time, each containing three or four hundred of these antelopes. Hundreds of bulls were scattered singly on the outskirts and in spaces between the herds, grazing, fighting, or lying down. The scene described was at a distance of over a hundred and twenty miles from Berbera.
The hartebeest bulls are very pugnacious, and two or three couples may be fighting round the same herd at once. Perhaps the easiest way to get a specimen is to send a couple of Midgáns round above the wind to drive them towards you, at the same time lying down in the grass. In this way a shot may be got within a hundred yards, but no one would care to shoot very many hartebeests, except for food. There is no chance of creeping up to hartebeests unless the huge ant-hills, often twenty-five feet high, are conveniently situated.
Often oryx and Sœmmering’s gazelles are seen in company with these great troops of hartebeests, but the oryx are much wilder. The hartebeests are rather tame, and they and the Sœmmering’s gazelles are always the last to move away. Hartebeests have great curiosity, and will frequently rush round a caravan, halting now and then within two hundred yards to gaze. This sight is an extraordinary one, all the antelopes having heavy and powerful fore-quarters, while the hind-quarters are poor and fall away; the coat is glossy like that of a well-groomed horse. In the midday haze of the plains they look something like troops of lions, as the powerful head and neck are of a different shade of chestnut to the rest of the body. The pace of the hartebeest is an ungraceful, lumbering canter, but it is probably the fleetest and most enduring of the Somáli antelopes. The largest herd I have seen must have contained a thousand individuals, packed closely together, and looking like a regiment of cavalry, the whole plain round being dotted with single bulls.
From their living so much in the open plains the hartebeests must subsist entirely on grass, for there is nothing else to eat; and they must be able to exist for several days without water. They are the favourite food of lions, and once, when out with my brother, I found a troop of three lions sitting out on the open plains, ten miles from the nearest bush; they had evidently been out all night among the herds, and on their becoming gorged, the rising sun had found them disinclined to move.