SOUTH AFRICAN ANIMALS.
ACCOUNTS of South African wild life have usually been written rather from the sportsman's point of view than from that of the naturalist. Mr. John Guille Millais, the author of " A Breath from the Veldt,"* is not only a sportsman, but a naturalist by nature, and an artist by heredity. The promise of his drawings of birds, shown in his work on Highland sport, "Game Birds and Shooting Sketches," is more than borne out in this handsome book, while the numerous large illus- trations of the fine African antelopes in their natural sur- roundings, the result of days and weeks of patient observa- tion, entitle him to a very high place among living animal painters. His eye ranges from earth to sky, and whether depicting the bare, parched plain of the veldt or the river banks of the Limpopo, soaring birds, feeding antelopes, trees, and insects fall naturally into place, while his account of his wanderings, though perhaps too diffuse, is always natural and interesting. He travelled from Cape Town to the frontier of Matabeleland, only retiring on the outbreak of war. The impression left by this journey through the best of the past and present game districts of South Africa is more satisfactory to the naturalist than might be expected. He saw nearly every animal except the white rhinoceros, the mountain-zebra, and the giraffe, whose disappearance from its ancient haunts is commonly deplored. The incident which interested him most, and which therefore claims the best attention of his readers, was his visit to the last wild herd
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of the white-tailed wildebeest, or " gnu." There are hardly more than five hundred and fifty of these strange creature. surviving in South Africa, of which only one herd is wild. They are preserved by a wealthy old Boer, Piet Terblans, whose sons act as keepers on his immense " farm " near Kronstad. There is little of the antelope in the demeanour of these strange creatures. They seem a compound of the wild horse and the buffalo. Mr. Millais's description of their grotesque savageness, their furious vigour, strange and wanton antics, and tribal discipline, is too long for quotation and too good for condensation ; but one instance of their prowess is sufficient. A wildebeest cow, with a young calf, was pursued by three of the Cape wild-dogs,—creatures as daring and persistent as the red-dogs of India. She killed two, and the third was shot by a hunter, with whom the wildebeest at once prepared to do battle.
South African lions are, beyond question, the boldest of all predatory animals, and those of Mashonaland are perhaps the boldest of all. During the night, their natural hunting time, they attack draught-animals, or even men, within a few yards of the camp-fires, and are a constant and serious danger to travellers in districts remote from the main tracks of traders. From the Zambesi, through Mashonaland, and north to the Limpopo, a churns of complaints rises in the pages of recent travellers, whose cattle or followers have suffered from their attacks. Mr. Selous has recorded the pursuit of the post from Salisbury by a lion, and the loss of the mail-bags which the animal tore from the back of the pack-horse. Mr. Millais, who crossed the Naanetsi River with a team of eight donkeys to draw his waggon—the oxen being left behind on account of the proximity , of the " fly " country—lost three in one night by a lion attack carried out with the utmost contempt for human beings, whether white or black. He was awakened by the lion's roar, and almost immediately saw one of the tethered donkeys knocked over. It was not five yards from the fire, but in the darkness and dazzle of the fire he could not see the attacker. " We knew instinctively that a lion had killed the donkey, and was standing over him not five yards from where we were, but it was hopeless to fire unless we saw something, or at least could make certain of his whereabouts." This odd scene continued for some moments, the actors being four or five black men, two white men, a pony, seven live donkeys and a dead one, and the lion standing over the latter, with a fire partly lighting up the figures, until a couple more donkeys broke loose. They rushed into a mealie- field, and there the party heard the lion chasing first one donkey and then another, as excited and as little afraid as a dog chasing rabbits in a field of barley. " At every bound the lion emitted a subdued boo-uff' as his forelegs struck the ground, but the two did not go far. There was presently a loud scuffle, a crack, and the sound of a heavy body falling ; then all was still." The lion chased the third donkey round the camp, killed, and ate it, and was next day shot by an ingenious trap, made by tying a rifle to posts, and fastening a string to the trigger, which the lion struck when revisiting its kill." The unsportsmanlike method of compassing its death is excused by Captain Millais on the ground of necessity. This lion was 10 ft. long, from the tip of the nose to the tip of the tail, was in perfect health and immensely formidable. But besides the "waggon and kraal business," which occupied it at the time of its last attack, it had taken to killing women when game and native goats were scarce, and travelling teams had not yet come up-country. Six women had been killed by it from one village. These South African lions have not the fine mane which they show in captivity, and in pictures drawn by English artists to illustrate books on African sport. Dr. Livingstone noted the odd resemblance of the lion's roar to that of the ostrich. Mr. Millais says that though the roar of the latter is not so loud, it has exactly the same tone as that of the lion. But the ostrich always roars his best, the lion very seldom. This is partly because a " good" roar needs a great physical effo.t. The whole interior and muscles of mouth, throat, stomach, and abdomen, are, for the moment, converted into an organ of terrific sound, and the sound does make the earth tremble,—or appear to do so. But the attitude is not that usually drawn. Unless he roars lying down, when he puts his head up, like a dog barking, the lion " emits his first moan in any position, then draws in his neck and lowers his head with extended jaws, right down to his forepaws, as if about to be violently sick ; while at the same
time the back is arched, and the whole animal bears an appearance of concentrated strain." An admirable profile sketch shows this characteristic position when roaring, and shows one point omitted in the description,—the distension of the stomach at the moment each "roar" is coughed out by the lion. This is Captain Millais' phonetic rendering of the sound, taken when listening to three lions roaring their best :
" Moa n—ROAR—E•C-A-R —ROAR—roar—roar—grunt — grunt- grunt—grunt (dying away)."
Why lions roar, when it ought to pay better to keep silent, is not yet explained. General Hamilton was convinced that tigers hunting in company roar to confuse and frighten the deer. Possibly the lion roars, when prowling round a camp, in the hope of causing some of the draught-animals to break loose ; at other times, it appears to be a form of conversation with others at a distance. Another antelope must, it seems, be added to the species which occasionally make a successful defence against the lion. This is the sable antelope, a large animal with long, backward-curving horns. When on the defensive it lies down, and protects its back and flanks by backward sweeps of these sabre-like weapons.
The insect-life of the veldt is very abundant. At one point Mr. Millais overtook an army of ants on the march. "It was about as like a regiment on the march as anything could possi- bly be," he writes. " As nearly as I could estimate the number, there were about two or three thousand big ants, and all were formed into 'fours,' though in military phrase the fours' did not keep their dressing.' The outside members of each four' never moved from their position, but the insiders constantly kept changing places across the column. They moved along like a huge black snake, and were led by a single ant, who examined the ground like a scout, while the column implicitly followed his movements, and apparently his direc- tions." Four times Mr. Millais picked up and threw away the leader, and thrice another came forward to take its place, when the army, which had halted, resumed its march.
The locust-swarms on the veldt represent a travelling stock of animal food, which not only change the face of Nature, as the locusts eat their way along, but brings another fauna in its train,—the pursuing animals. The plover migrates wholly in accordance with the movements of the locusts, while even herbivorous animals seem disposed to eat them. These and other insects are also relished by the baboons, and Mr. Millais watched and sketched these creatures hunting for water-insects on the banks of the Nuanetsi. This was a naturalist's paradise. Every evening the flocks of saddle-backed storks used to "fly spirals," exhibiting in concert the movement by which M. Marey accounted for the apparently horizontal soaring of birds. There too the vultures met to bathe before breakfast—a habit with which these birds are seldom credited ; lions and leopards haunted the dense reed - beds, kingfishers, egrets, plovers, Egyptian geese, Bateleur eagles, and white-headed eagles were seen daily. Readers of Mr. Millais's last book will remember his pictures of the Highland eagles " driving " ptarmigan. He has an almost photographic power of eye for drawing birds in move- ment, and his sketches of the African species are even better than those of the Scotch birds. Visitors to the Zoo are familar with " Bateleur's eagle ;" its crimson beak and legs and large dark eye make it among the handsomest of the species. This bird, Mr. Millais notes, flies with its chin laid almost on its breast, so that it looks backward between its legs when hunting. Many animals lie still till an eagle has passed, and then rise and run. The "Bateleur," it is surmised, knows this, and keeps its eye on the ground behind it.
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