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Updated: May 28, 2025
Our pretty songsters of Ain were no more to be seen. The guinea-fowl was seldom met with, and only a few tiny antelopes wandered over the solitary expanse. Instead, we were aroused by the roar of the lion, the laugh of the hyena, and we had to protect our sheep and goats, as the spotted leopard was lurking around our tents.
The game being at full speed in retreat, my sport would have been over had we not at that moment heard shouts and yells exactly ahead of the vast herd of antelopes. At once they halted, and we perceived a number of natives, armed with spears and bows, who had intercepted the herd in their retreat, and who now turned them by their shouts exactly towards us.
The African hunter Cumming tells us that the skin of the eland, as well as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most delicious perfume of trees and grass. I would have every man so much like a wild antelope, so much a part and parcel of nature, that his very person should thus sweetly advertise our senses of his presence, and remind us of those parts of nature which he most haunts.
Presently, however, the higher layers of mist cleared a little, and revealed, at the end of a long slope of snow, a patch of green grass, some five hundred yards beneath us, through which a stream was running. Nor was this all. By the stream, basking in the bright sun, stood and lay a group of from ten to fifteen large antelopes at that distance we could not see of what species.
The Chamois, which is classed by many among goats, in some degree approaches the antelopes. Its horns shoot straight up, and then at the tips turn suddenly back, like a fish hook; it frequents all the mountain chains of Europe and western Asia; in summer climbing to the highest summits, and displaying the most daring agility.
Hour after hour it was the same unhomely and unkindly world about our onward path; tumbled boulders, cliffs that drearily imitate the shape of monuments and fortifications how drearily, how tamely, none can tell who has not seen them; not a tree, not a patch of sward, not one shapely or commanding mountain form; sage-brush, eternal sage- brush; over all, the same weariful and gloomy colouring, grays warming into brown, grays darkening towards black; and for sole sign of life, here and there a few fleeing antelopes; here and there, but at incredible intervals, a creek running in a canon.
As the smoke cleared off, to my infinite delight I saw the eland struggling on the grass. We both rushed forward, and my uncle's knife quickly deprived it of life. It was a magnificent animal, as big as an ox, being the largest of the South African antelopes. On opening its stomach we discovered water, which, on being allowed to cool, was sufficiently pure to quench our burning thirst.
They are not the same species, however. In my opinion, they are not wild sheep at all, but true antelopes, as much so as the chamois of the Alps, or the prong-horns of the prairie. Indeed, to say that our common sheep sprung from the argali seems a very absurd theory.
They were black in colour, round-shaped, and slightly ringed. The doe was without horns, and was a much smaller animal than her mate. From all these marks Hendrik thought the little antelopes were "ourebis;" and such they were. He continued to stalk in upon them, until he was as close as he could get.
Directions were then issued for the horsemen to make a circuit of about seven miles, so as to encompass the herd. When this was done, the whole mounted force dashed off simultaneously, at full speed, shouting and yelling at the top of their voices. In a short space of time the antelopes, started from their hiding-places, came bounding from all points into the valley.
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