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They were debating whether they should make an attempt to get near to the other gemsbok, which were still in sight at a distance, or try for some other game, when they perceived three lions not far from them on a rising ground; and suddenly the horses, from which they had dismounted to give them time to recover their wind, broke loose from the Hottentots who held the bridles, and galloped away towards the camp.
There was no water now, for Inyati's fears had been well-founded. The little pool had been trampled into black mud by countless gemsbok, and the various half-eaten carcasses strewn about showed that the lions had taken heavy toll of them.
Animal life, however, there was in abundance, and we had no need to leave our path to shoot as much game as we required. At times, on cresting the brow of a dune, we would come close upon a herd of gemsbok in the long "aar" beneath us; magnificent animals, whose long, straight, saber-like horns are feared even by the lion.
Brown very quietly laid one hand on Stent’s arm. "A geier, perhaps," suggested Siurd, his eye glued to his spyglass. "No ibex?" asked Stent in a voice a little forced. "Noch nicht, mon ami. Tiens! A gemsbok high on the third peak feeding." "Accorded," grunted the Herr Professor after an interval of search; and he closed his spyglass and placed his rifle on the moss.
Bremen led the way round the copse, followed by our travellers; they soon arrived on the other side of it, with their guns all ready; but on their arrival, to their astonishment, they perceived the lion and the male gemsbok lying together. The antelope was dead, but the lion still alive; though the horns of the gemsbok had passed through his body.
However, my opinion is that you will have to kill a lion before you have traveled much further, without going in quest of him. There are hundreds of them here; as many as there are in Namaqua-land." "Look, master!" said Bremen, pointing to seven or eight splendid antelopes about a mile distant. "I see," replied the Major. "What are they?" "Gemsbok," said Swinton.
The unicorn is, no doubt, the gemsbok antelope; for when you look at the animal at a distance, its two horns appear as if they were only one, and the Bushmen have so portrayed the animal in their caves. The dragon is also not exactly imaginary; for, the Lacerta volans, or flying lizard of Northern Africa, is very like a small dragon in miniature.
Why, the menagerie lions can't roar at all; they are nothing but overgrown cats, compared to the lion of the desert." "That is very true," observed Swinton; "however, I am delighted, for now I have not only my gemsbok, which is a gem above price, but also as fine a lion as I have ever seen. I should like to have them stuffed and set up just as they were before Alexander killed them.
Gemsbok: About 2,450 in Namaqualand, 4,500 in Vryburg, 4,000 in Gordonia, and 670 in the Kenhardt, Mafeking and Barkly West divisions. Koodoo: About 10,000, found chiefly in the divisions of Albany, Barkly West, Fort Beaufort, Hay, Herbert, Jansenville, Kuruman, Ladismith, Mafeking, Mossel Bay, Oudtshoorn, Riversdale, Steytlerville, Uitenhage, Victoria East and Vryburg.
It was a small creek, rather, where the banks were sufficiently low and hard to allow the animals to reach the water without difficulty, which they could not do at many places along the borders of the lake on account of the wide fringe of reeds and thick underwood which encircled it. "Is the gemsbok the only animal we have lost?" "Oh no, indeed," cried Leo. "Poor Chico is gone!"
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