African Camp Fires

hard morning, and so did not go along. The guide wore still his red tarboosh, his dark short jacket, his saffron yellow nether garment-it was not exactly a skirt-and his silver-headed ra

ng our way through low growth that proved all but impenetrable. The idea was to find a sable feeding in one of the little open glades; but whenever I allowed myself to think of the many adverse elements of the game, the chances seemed very slim. It took a half-hour to get from one glade to the next; there were tho

king into brush and through country that would be considered difficult going even in Canada. At the end of twenty minutes my every garment was not wringing but dripping wet, so that when I carried my rifle over my arm water ran down the barrel and off the muzzle in

t bath and clean clothes I derived much refreshment. Shortly I was sitting in my canvas chair, sipping a cocoan

do. Three days more of this sort of work will feed me up. If we do

ill do for

in this country sable were found, when they were found at all, which was not often. They must be

fter a long interval the rumblings came to us. So very distant was it that we paid it little attention, save as an interesting background to our own still evening. Almost between sentences of our slow conversation, however, it rushed up to the zenith,

f quite happily. In this climate one likes to get wet. The ground was sodden

ks and russets, so that the effect at a little distance was almost precisely that of our autumn foliage in its duller phases. So familiar were

nate. In another country I should have named it as a charred log on an old pine burning, for that was precisely what it looked like. We glanced at it casu

ed as fast as we could down to that point of vantage. There we cautiously parted the grasses and looked. The sable had disappeared. The place where he had been lying was plainly to be identified, and there was no cover save a tiny bush between two and three feet high. We were quit

ver, before the gentle snapping of F

t bush," he whis

ead. We lay still for some time, while the soft, warm rain drizzled down on us, our eyes riveted on the bush. And then we caught the momentary flash of curved horns as the sable tossed his head. It seemed incredible even

ed up through the tall dripping grass to a new position behind a little bush. Cautiously raising my head, I found I could see plainly the sable's head and part of his shoulders. My position was cramped and out of balance for offhand shooting; but I did my best, and heard the loud p

ast Africa. This beast has been described by Heller as a new subspecies, and named Rooseveltii. His description was based upon an immature buck and a doe shot by Kermit Roosevelt. The determination of subspecies on so slight evidence seems to me