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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.
It was when we were about four days trek, or sixty miles, from the pass that one evening, as we sat eating our food, Jan, Ralph, and I I remember it was the fried steaks of an eland that Ralph had shot the lad Gaasha, who had now served us for some six months, came up to the fire, and having saluted Ralph, squatted down before him Kaffir fashion, saying that he had a favour to ask.
"To cover a wider range of shooting, we one day decided to divide the camp, and I moved off about four miles and pitched my tent on a low hill, which left the old camp in clear view across the plain. Early the next morning I went out after eland and had an excellent morning's sport.
Being only a poor runner and always very fat, the hunt is usually a short one; and ends in the eland being shot down, skinned, and cut up. There is no great excitement about this chase, except that it is not every day an eland can be started.
This supposition, too, would be helped by the fact that there were still little herds and single wanderers, the relics of the vast hosts of antelopes of various species, from the tiny gazelle-like animals up through the clumsy hartebeeste and wildebeeste to the huge eland; and at a distance I felt it possible that myself and steed might be taken for one of these.
He greeted me by saying that after all we had not gone to Baringo for nothing the previous day, and on my asking him what he meant he told me about the finding of the eland, taking, it for granted that I knew it was mine.
Curiously enough this name eland was taken by the Dutch to South Africa, and there applied to the largest and handsomest of the bovine antelopes, Oreas canna. In mediaeval times there are many references in hunting tales to the elk, notably in the passage in the Nibelungen Lied describing Siegfried's great hunt on the upper Rhine, in which he killed an elk.
It had evidently received fresh alarm, from something in the gorge; and preferred facing its old enemy to encountering the new. Hendrik did not give his attention to the eland. He could ride it down at any time. He was more anxious first to know what had given it the start backward; so he continued to press forward to the head of the ravine.
The fact was, that as soon as the eland halted, Hendrik intended to halt also; and for that purpose pulled strongly upon his bridle. But, to his astonishment, he found that his quagga did not share his intention. Instead of obeying the bit, the animal caught the steel in his teeth, and laying his ears back, galloped straight on!
Forgotten what?" "It isn't beef," he said quietly. "It's big antelope." "What! eland?" I cried joyously. "No; the big, solid-hoofed antelope that eats like nylghau or quagga." "What do you mean?" I said wonderingly, as I mentally ran over all the varieties of antelope I had seen away on the veldt. "The big sort with iron soles to their hoofs.
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