Vernacular Names:—Defassa (Amharic) of the Abyssinians; Om hetehet (Arabic), converted by Baker into Mehedéhet; Bura or Chora in Kordofan; Kuru and Nsumma in Uganda.
Size large, about 46 to 50 inches in height at the withers. Above rufous brown, hairs at base greyish white; belly and inner side of limbs white; rump white. Face above chestnut-red, sides of face and eye-stripe white. Ears long (about 8 inches), pointed, rufous at back, white inside; line round nose and chin white. Hairs on neck long and harsh. Feet below knees blackish brown, passing into black towards the hoofs; tail above like the back, otherwise whitish, about 12 inches long, tuft of hairs beyond 4 inches.
Female similar but without horns; teats four (Rüppell).
Hab. Western Abyssinia, Sennaar, Kordofan, and the Nile valley, south to Uganda and British and German East Africa.
Amongst the many zoological discoveries made by the great naturalist and traveller Dr. Edward Rüppell in Abyssinia and the surrounding lands about sixty years ago was the present species of Antelope, which he proposed to call “defassa” from its Amharic name. Rüppell published a figure and description of it in a work which he called ‘Neue Wirbelthiere zu der Fauna von Abyssinien gehörig,’ and dedicated to the Senate of his native State, the Free City of Frankfort-on-the-Main. After an excellent description of both sexes of Antilope defassa, Rüppell tells us that it lives in the grassy valleys of Western Abyssinia, round the Lake of Dembea, where it is generally met with in small families of from four to six individuals. Amongst these there is never more than one wholly adult male. What it prefers for food are the leaves and seed-stalks of Holcus sorghum besides grasses of every sort. Its gait is rather unwieldy, but it is not very timid. This Antelope, Dr. Rüppell continues, is also met with in Sennaar and Kordofan, where its common name is “Bura”; skins from these districts examined by him in Cairo were recognized as being similar to the Abyssinian “Defassa.” The Abyssinians do not often hunt this species, because so few of them care to eat meat, and its hide is of little value. It is, however, said to be the habitual food of the lions of the district that it inhabits. Rüppell’s specimens of both sexes are now in the Senckenbergian Museum at Frankfort, where Sclater has examined them.
Another great explorer of Eastern Africa, Th. v. Heuglin, met with this Antelope in the bushy and woody valleys of the Qualabat and Mareb, and thence eastwards to where the mountain-range falls off into the lowlands. He found it generally less difficult to approach than other Antelopes, and had many opportunities of shooting it at morning and evening amongst the high grasses that border the woods.
Fig. 32.
Head and foot of “Nsumma Antelope” (Speke).
(P. Z. S. 1864, p. 102.)