e Eland and the Koodoo and the Quagga and
all the rest of them didn't know which way to jump, Best Beloved. They
didn't indeed!

After a long time--things lived for ever so long in those days--they
learned to avoid anything that looked like a Leopard or an Ethiopian;
and bit by bit--the Giraffe began it, because his legs were the
longest--they went away from the High Veldt. They scuttled for days and
days and days till they came to a great forest, 'sclusively full of
trees and bushes and stripy, speckly, patchy-blatchy shadows, and there
they hid: and after another long time, what with standing half in the
shade and half out of it, and what with the slippery-slidy shadows of
the trees falling on them, the Giraffe grew blotchy, and the Zebra grew
stripy, and the Eland and the Koodoo grew darker, with little wavy grey
lines on their backs like bark on a tree trunk; and so, though you could
hear them and smell them, you could very seldom see them, and then only
when you knew precisely where to look. They had a beautiful time in the
'sclusively speckly-spickly shadows of the forest, while the Leopard and
the Ethiopian ran about over the 'sclusively greyish-yellowish-reddish
High Veldt outside, wondering where all their breakfasts and their
dinners and their teas had gone. At last they were so hungry that they
ate rats and beetles and rock-rabbits, the Leopard and the Ethiopian,
and then they had the Big Tummy-ache, both together; and then they met
Baviaan--the dog-headed, barking Baboon, who is Quite the Wisest Animal
in All South Africa.

[Illustration: THIS is Wise Baviaan, the dog-headed Baboon, Who is
Quite the Wisest Animal in All South Africa. I have drawn him from a
statue that I made up out of my own head, and I have written his name on
his belt and on his shoulder and on the thing he is sitting on. I have
written it in what is not called Coptic and Hieroglyphic and Cuneiformic
and Bengalic and Burmic and Hebric, all because he is so wise. He is not
beautiful, but he is very wise; and I should like to paint him with
paint-box colours, but I am not allowed. The umbrella-ish thing about
his head is his Conventional Mane.]

Said Leopard to Baviaan (and it was a very hot day), 'Where has all the
game gone?'

And Baviaan winked. _He_ knew.

Said the Ethiopian to Baviaan, 'Can you tell me the present habitat of
the aboriginal Fauna?' (That meant just the same thing, but the
Ethiopian always used long words. He was a