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Updated: June 3, 2025
I have seen the kokong or gnu, kama or hartebeest, the tsessebe, kukama, and the giraffe, so mangy as to be uneatable even by the natives. Reference has already been made to the peripneumonia which cuts off horses, tolos or koodoos.
The gnu was dancing about, and the ostriches ran races with me, but I am still the fastest. I went to the desert with its yellow sand. It looks like the bottom of the sea. I met a caravan! They were killing their last camel to get water to drink, but it wasn't much they got. The sun was blazing above, and the sand burning below. There were no limits to the outstretched desert.
The Mopané Forest is perfectly level, and after rains the water stands in pools; but during most of the year it is dry. The trees here were very large, and planted some twenty or thirty yards apart: as there are no branches on their lower parts animals see very far. I shot a gnu, but wandered in coming back to the party, and did not find them till it was getting dark.
Wherefore, for as long as a man would take to select a cigarette with care and light it, there was dead silence and stillness, broken only by the distant, deep "Hoo-hoo, hoo! hoo-hoo, hoo!" of a party of ground hornbills. Then that devil of meddlesome curiosity which is the curse of the wildebeests fell upon that gnu, and sanity left him. "Kwank!" neighed he. And again, "Kwank!"
And now I found myself in a very hunter's paradise, for the country was literally swarming with game of almost every description, consisting of eland, gemsbok, springbok, reitbok, and antelope of all kinds, often in herds numbering several thousands; also that curious-looking beast the gnu, of which I now got my first glimpse; troops of quagga and zebra; giraffes, rhinoceroses, lions, leopards, and ostriches; hippopotami and crocodiles in the rivers; but still very few elephants, and those so shy that it was only with the utmost difficulty I succeeded in securing three within the first fortnight after crossing the Klip River.
Potiphar, inquired: "What colors suit the Indian summer best, Mrs. Potiphar?" "Well, a kind of misty color," said Boosey, laughingly, and emphasizing missed, as if he meant some pun upon the word. "Which conceals the outline of the landscape," interrupted Mrs. Gnu. "Cajoling you with a sense of warmth on the very edge of winter, eh?" asked the Sennaar minister.
In my library I might hang a copy of the family escutcheon as a matter of interest and curiosity to myself, for I'm sure I shouldn't understand it. Do you suppose Mrs. Gnu knows what gules argent are? A man may be as proud of his family as he chooses, and, if he has noble ancestors, with good reason. But there is no sense in parading that pride.
The gnoos that had been seen were the common kind called by the Dutch colonists "wildebeests" or wild-oxen, and by the Hottentots "gnoo" or "gnu," from a hollow moaning sound to which these creatures sometimes give utterance, and which is represented by the word "gnoo-o-oo."
Every day we used to shoot some animal or other, for provision: sometimes it was a gnu, something between an antelope and a bull; at other times it was one of the antelope kind.
Gnu declined: but I knew mamma would let me go with the Potiphars. "Dear Pot.," said Mrs. P., "we shall be gone so short a time, and shall be so busy, and hurrying from one place to another, that we had better leave little Freddy behind. Poor, dear little fellow, it will be much better for him to stay." Mr.
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