by special license. The eland is as big as a bull, with
spiral horns and beautifully marked skin, and both the male and female
carry horns. Those of the latter are usually larger and slenderer, but
the skin of the female is not so handsomely marked as that of the male.

It is hard to get near an eland, but as the bull is nearly six feet high
at the shoulders it is not especially difficult to hit him at three
hundred yards or more. The one I shot was three hundred and sixty-five
yards away and carried beautiful horns, twenty-four and one-quarter
inches in length. The head of the great bull eland makes a wonderfully
imposing trophy when placed in your baronial halls.

In the foregoing list of antelopes I have tried to tell a little about
the types of that class of animal that I met in my African travels--in
all, sixteen species of antelope. My chief excuse for doing it is to
enable people at home to know the difference between a topi and a sun
hat and between a sing-sing and a cob. The names of many of the African
antelope family are strange and confusing, so that it is little wonder
that they mystify people in America. There are a hundred or more kinds,
and no one can hope to know them unless he makes a business of it.

I have not seen the grysbok, or the suni, or the dibitag, or the lechwi,
or the aoul, or the gerenuk, or the blaauwbok, or the chevrotain, or
lots of others, but who in the world could guess what they were or what
they looked like, judging only from the names?

CHAPTER XVI

IN THE TALL GRASS OF THE MOUNT ELGON COUNTRY. A NARROW ESCAPE FROM A
LONG-HORNED RHINO. A THANKSGIVING DINNER AND A VISIT TO A NATIVE VILLAGE

Mount Elgon is one of the four great mountains of Africa. You can find
it on the map of the dark continent, standing all alone, just a little
bit north of Victoria Nyanza, and surrounded by names that one has never
heard of before.

The mountain is distinctly out of the picture-post-card belt--in fact,
the only belt that one will find around Elgon is the timber belt that
encircles the mountain, and perhaps also a few that the local residents
wear on Sundays and national holidays.

The function of the latter class of belt is to keep up a gay appearance.
It is worn for looks, not warmth.

The traveler who goes to Mount Elgon will not be distracted by sounds of
civilization, except such as he takes with him. He will travel for days
without seeing a sign of human life beyond his ow