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Updated: May 27, 2025
Now this hartebeest, although an ill-shaped antelope, is one of the very swiftest of the tribe; and the wild hound does not capture it without a severe chase. In fact, he could not capture it at all, if speed were the only point between the two animals. But it is not. The hartebeest has a weakness in its character, opposite to which the wild hound possesses a cunning.
The animals taken to camp during our three days' sport were two buffaloes, two wild boar, three hartebeest, one zebra, and one pallah; besides which, were shot eight guinea-fowls, three florican, two fish-eagles, one pelican, and one of the men caught a couple of large silurus fish.
Or a flock of ostriches would career across our path, their huge strides covering the ground at an incredible pace; queer-looking hartebeest were also plentiful, and duiker, steenbok, and smaller fry abounded everywhere.
Our field-cornet had a proof of this as he watched the chase. His elevated position gave him a view of the whole ground, and he could note every movement both of pursuer and pursued. On breaking off, the hartebeest ran in a right line, and the hounds followed straight after.
The soles were made of either buffalo or cameleopard; the front part, perhaps, of koodoo, or hartebeest, or bushbuck, and the back of the shoe of lion, or hyaena, or sable antelope, while the rheimpy or thread with which the whole was sewed, consisted of a thin strip of the skin of a steinbok.
Within a dozen yards of the cliff lay the body of the hartebeest, where it had been "pulled down" by the dogs. It was already half eaten, not by the hounds that had hunted it, but by their puppies of all ages, that to the number of more than threescore were now standing around the carcass, tugging away at its flesh and snarling at one another!
Knives, forks, and glasses had been ruthlessly swept from the upper end of one of the tables laid for the Staff luncheon, and across the fair expanse of linen, pounded into whiteness and occasional holes by the vigorous thumpers of the Kaffir laundry-women, meandered a marvellous procession of quagga and koodoo, rhino and hartebeest, lion and giraffe, ostrich and elephant, modelled by the skilful hands of Matabele toy-makers.
Another had shot a buffalo-calf, and another had bagged a hartebeest; the Wakonongo related their laughable rencontre with me in the woods, and were lavish in their description of the stores of honey to be found in the woods; and all this time Selim and his youthful subs were trying their sharp teeth on the meat of a young pig which one of the hunters had shot, but which nobody else would eat, because of the Mohammedan aversion to pig, which they had acquired during their transformation from negro savagery to the useful docility of the Zanzibar freed-man.
The hunter has been allowed to kill ten of each on his license, but under the new game ordinance in force since December, 1909, only four Jackson's are allowed and twenty Coke's instead of ten. When we went across the Guas Ngishu Plateau in early November we saw thousands of Jackson's hartebeest, and never a calf.
The hartebeest made one last despairing effort to escape, but, finding that speed would no longer avail, the creature wheeled suddenly round, and placed itself in an attitude of defiance the foam falling from its lips, while its red eyes sparkled like coals of fire. In another moment the dogs were around it. "What a splendid pack!" exclaimed Von Bloom. "Oh! that I had such an one!
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