ward along
the Athi River and the Thika Thika. One need never travel more than two
hours' drive or walk from Nairobi to see wildebeest, but it's a
different thing to get them. You would have to travel many hours, most
likely, before you succeeded in bringing down a wildebeest.

My first shot in Africa was at a wildebeest at three hundred yards. The
bullet struck, but so did the wildebeest. He struck out for northern
Africa, and when last seen was still headed earnestly for the north
pole. I am consoled in thinking that my shot must have inflicted more
surprise than injury and so I hope he has now fully recovered, wilder
and beastier than of yore.

My last shot in Africa, the day before leaving for the coast, was at a
wildebeest an hour or so out of Nairobi. This time I missed entirely and
repeatedly and the wildebeest remains unscathed to roam the broad plains
of the Athi until some better or luckier shot passes his way. If I have
anything on my conscience, it is certainly not the remorse of having
reduced the supply of wildebeests.

[Drawing: _Wildebeest With the White Man Only Eight Miles Away_]

In our last few days' shooting out on the Athi Plains we saw perhaps
fifty or seventy-five of these great bison-like animals. Their bodies
and legs and tails are slender and graceful, like those of a horse, but
the heads are heavy-featured, heavy-horned and heavy-bearded. They are
wild and when they see you a mile or so away will start and run for the
nearest vanishing point, usually arriving there long before you do.

The foregoing seven species of animals are the ones most commonly seen
in East Africa. Perhaps something about some of the less common ones
will have some instructive value.

CHAPTER XV

SOME NATURAL HISTORY IN WHICH IT IS REVEALED THAT A SING-SING WATERBUCK
IS NOT A SINGING TOPI, AND THAT A TOPI IS NOT A SPECIES OF HEAD-DRESS

While reading an account of the trophies secured by Colonel Roosevelt on
the Guas Ngishu Plateau, I was mystified by seeing the name of an animal
I had never heard tell of--a singing topi. For a time I puzzled over
this strange creature and finally evolved a satisfactory explanation of
how the animal made its appearance in the despatches. Briefly, "there
haint no sich animal," as the old farmer said when he saw his first
dromedary in a circus; it was merely a mistake, due to the telegraphic
abbreviations which foreign correspondents employ to save cable tolls.

What the