“I may here mention that I have specimens of the Dorcas Gazelle from the country south of the Chott Djerid, which are somewhat paler in colour than the ordinary form. No doubt this variation in colouring is due to some difference in the nature of the soil and surroundings of the districts from whence these particular specimens came.”
So little is known of the natural history of Tripoli and Barca that we can only presume that the Dorcas Gazelle ranges through these countries on its way to Egypt, where it is well known to be abundant in the Western Desert. Sclater examined large numbers of both sexes of this species in the Zoological Garden of Gizeh near Cairo in 1895 from this locality[8], and several specimens from the same source have been received in exchange by the Zoological Society of London. Our figures of both sexes of the Dorcas Gazelle (Plate LVII.) have been prepared by Mr. Smit from examples thus obtained.
In the eastern desert of Egypt the Dorcas Gazelle appears in these days to be not nearly so common. Mr. E. N. Buxton, who traversed the eastern desert in his expedition after Capra sinaitica, tells us that two or three Gazelles together were the most he ever saw at one time. Between the Nile and the granite mountains 80 miles to the east, a very arid district, Mr. Buxton only saw Gazelles once. They were more numerous among the foot hills of the Kettar range and the porphyry mountains, for the obvious reason that there is more vegetation there.
The Gazelles frequently depicted in the paintings of the ancient Egyptian tombs and temples were, no doubt, usually Gazella dorcas in Lower, and G. isabella in Upper Egypt, although they were probably also well acquainted with G. arabica. Dr. Hartmann in his interesting disquisition on the animals of these paintings (Zeitschr. f. Aegyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde, 1864, p. 22) gives us the hieroglyphic symbols of the Gazelle, and its corresponding name as “Gahés.” It was evidently a common object of chase even in those days.
Crossing over into the Holy Land, we find the Dorcas Gazelle registered in Canon Tristram’s ‘Fauna and Flora of Palestine’ as met with in all suitable localities. From the same author’s ‘Natural History of the Bible’ we extract the following passages relating to this favourite animal:—
“The Gazelle (Gazella dorcas) is by far the most abundant of all the large game in Palestine; indeed it is the only wild animal of the chase which an ordinary traveller has any chance of seeing. Small herds of gazelles are to be found in every part of the country, and in the south they congregate in herds of nearly 100 together. One such herd I met with at the southern end of the Jebel Usdum, or salt mountain, south of the Dead Sea, where they had congregated to drink of the only sweet spring within several miles, Ain Beida. Though generally considered an animal of the desert and the plains, the gazelle appears at home everywhere. It shares the rocks of Engedi with the wild goats; it dashes over the wide expanse of the desert beyond Beersheba; it canters in single file under the monastery of Marsaba. We found it in the glades of Carmel, and it often springs from its leafy covert on the back of Tabor, and screens itself under the thorn bushes of Gennesaret. Among the grey hills of Galilee it is still ‘the roe upon the mountains of Bether,’ and I have seen a little troop of gazelles feeding on the Mount of Olives, close to Jerusalem itself. While in the open grounds of the south it is the wildest of game, and can only be approached, unless by chance, at its accustomed drinking-places, and that before the dawn of morning; in the glades of Galilee it is very easily surprised, and trusts to the concealment of its covert for safety. I have repeatedly startled the gazelle from a brake only a few yards in front of me, and once, when ensconced out of sight in a storax bush, I watched a pair of gazelles with their kid, which the dam was suckling. Ever and anon both the soft-eyed parents would gambol with it as though fawns themselves.”
Canon Tristram describes the mode of hunting Gazelles practised by the Arabs as follows:—
“The usual way of hunting the Gazelle is by lying in wait, either at its watering-places, which are always known to the Arabs, or in the defiles in the rocky districts. A more wholesale mode is practised in the Houran, by driving a herd into a decoy-enclosure, with a pitfall on the other side, where they are easily taken. When in company with great sheikhs, I have more than once had an opportunity of witnessing the chase of the Gazelle, after the only fashion which the high-bred Bedouin thinks sportsmanlike, viz. with the greyhound or the falcon, or more often with both combined. When the greyhound, which is the large Persian dog, with long silky ears and silky tail, is employed alone, success is very uncertain, and the ‘roe’ often ‘delivers itself from the hand of the hunter.’ When the chase is conducted with the falcon alone, the bird is trained to dash repeatedly at the head of the victim, taking an instinctive care not to impale itself on the horns (which, nevertheless, often happens), and by its feints so to delay the quarry that the horsemen are able to come up with it. But the favourite chase is by both bird and dog. The birds are first swung off at the Gazelle, and make repeated swoops, while the greyhound gains upon it and seizes it. With a well-trained bird the poor beast can rarely escape in this chase, unless he have a long start of the hunter. The flesh of the Gazelle, though of high repute, we did not find so savoury as that of the wild goat. Indeed it was generally very dry and always lean, but our taste is not that of the Arabs.”
In the desert country east of the Jordan, Canon Tristram tells us, the Dorcas Gazelle is replaced by the Arabian Gazelle (G. arabica); but a Gazelle, probably of this species, is found in the Syrian Desert north of Damascus, as testified by many writers.
In his interesting volume on ‘Palmyra and Zenobia,’ Dr. William Wright, describing his journey between Damascus and Palmyra, says:—