United States or Poland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Other rare animals are apt to "use" about one locality, so that once the hunter finds tracks, new or old, his game is one of patient, skilful search. The greater kudu, however, seems in this country at least to be a wanderer. He is here to-day and gone to-morrow. Systematic search seems as foolish as in the case of the proverbial needle in the haystack.
The great prize of our journeying was still lacking, and, to tell the truth, we had about given up hope, if not our efforts. Almost we had begun to believe our friends in Nairobi who had scoffed at the uselessness of our quest. Always we conscientiously looked over good kudu country, hundreds of miles of it, and always with the same lack of result, or even of encouragement.
The kudu had evidently settled down for a snooze; it was impossible, in the situation, to shorten the distance without being discovered; the daylight was almost gone; we could make out no trace of him except through our glasses. Look as hard as we could, we could see nothing with the naked eye.
"They have gone away," replied Zu-tag. "Kudu has come out of his lair twice since they left." "Did the tribe chase them away?" asked Tarzan. "No," replied the ape. "We did not see them go. We do not know why they left." Tarzan swung quickly through the trees toward the clearing. The hut and boma were as he had left them, but there was no sign of either the man or the woman.
Some night Numa will be very hungry and very angry then he will leap over the thorn bushes which encircle Goro and we will have no more light after Kudu seeks his lair the night will be black with the blackness that comes when Goro is lazy and sleeps late into the night, or when he wanders through the skies by day, forgetting the jungle and its people."
The low jungly coast region; the fierce desert of the Serengetti; the swift sullen rhinoceros-haunted stretches of the Tsavo; Nairobi, the strangest mixture of the twentieth centuries A.D. and B.C.; Mombasa with its wild, barbaric passionate ebb and flow of life, of colour, of throbbing sound, the great lions of the Kapiti Plains, the Thirst of the Loieta, the Masai spearmen, the long chase for the greater kudu; the wonderful, high unknown country beyond the Narossara and other affairs will there be detailed.
We broke back through the ramparts, by means of another pass we had discovered when looking for kudu, to the Third Bench again. Here we camped in the valley of Lengeetoto. This valley is one of the most beautiful and secluded in this part of Africa. It is shaped like an ellipse, five or six miles long by about three miles wide, and is completely surrounded by mountains.
If you had stood with us atop one of the mountains, and with us had looked abroad on the countless leagues of rolling brush-clothed land, undulating away in all directions over a far horizon, you must with us have estimated as very slight the chances of happening on the exact pin point where the kudu at that moment happened to be feeding.
Venison, consequently, abounds within the forest clumps, and the kudu, hartebeest, antelope, and zebra may be seen at early dawn emerging into the open savannahs to feed. At night, the cyn-hyaena prowls about with its hideous clamour seeking for sleeping prey, man or beast.
Looking back, we were stricken motionless by the sight of Kilimanjaro, its twin peaks suspended a clean blue sky, fresh snow mantling its shoulders. This day, so cheeringly opened, was destined to fulfil its promise. In the dense scrub dwell a shy and rare animal called the lesser kudu specimens of which we greatly desired.
Word Of The Day