Horns of Bubalis cokei, front view.
In June 1880 Col. the Hon. W. C. W. Coke, F.Z.S., a renowned English sportsman, started from Zanzibar on a shooting-expedition towards Mpapwa, along the caravan-route from the port of Saadani. On reaching the open plains on the plateau of Usagara he met with several herds of this Antelope, and obtained the frontlet (fig. 4 c), now in the British Museum, upon which the species was established by Dr. Günther.
Colonel Coke has kindly permitted us to refer to his journal, in which we find it recorded that he first met with this Hartebeest on June 28th, between the Missionary Stations of Mamboia and Mpapwa. On July 10th, when encamped near M’lalli, at the edge of the plains, though sick with fever, he went out and shot the animal, upon the head of which the species was afterwards based. After this Colonel Coke was taken so ill that he had to be carried back to the coast in a hammock, and was unable to shoot any more of these Antelopes.
In Sir John Kirk’s collection are two fine heads of this Hartebeest, likewise obtained by him in Usagara.
Proceeding northwards to the country round Kilimanjaro we find that Mr. H. C. V. Hunter, in his appendix to Sir John Willoughby’s ‘East Africa and its Big Game,’ records Coke’s Hartebeest as, at the date of his visit (1887), “quite the most common Antelope in the plains” of that district, “being found everywhere in immense herds.” From the same part of the British East-African Company’s territory we have seen and examined numerous other heads of this Hartebeest, including fine examples of both sexes belonging to Consul-General Holmwood, obtained during a shooting-excursion from Zanzibar to this attractive district.
Fig. 4 b.
Horns of Bubalis cokei, side view.
Mr. Ernest Gedge, who traversed British East Africa in company with Mr. F. J. Jackson, has kindly compiled from his note-books the following account of his experiences with Coke’s Hartebeest:—
“These Antelopes range over a very wide extent of country in both British and German East Africa. In the latter sphere I have procured specimens on the south shore of the Victoria Nyanza which in all respects were identical with those found nearer the coast; hence it is reasonable to suppose that they occupy the entire region lying between the lake and the coast. In British East Africa the northern limit of their extension seems to be somewhere about Lake Naivasha in the Masai country. On one occasion, however, I obtained an odd specimen in the valley of the Ngare Rongri, to the south of Lake Baringo, but, as a rule, they are not to be found so far north, as in this district they give place to B. jacksoni.