When slightly alarmed or suspicious
the does always stood compactly in a herd, while the bucks remained
discreetly in the background, their beautiful, branching, widespread
horns showing over the backs of their harems. The impalla is, in my
opinion, one of the most beautiful and graceful of the African bucks, a
perpetual delight to watch either standing or running. These beasts are
extraordinarily agile, and have a habit of breaking their ordinary fast
run by unexpectedly leaping high in the air. At a distance they give
somewhat the effect of dolphins at sea, only their leaps are higher and
more nearly perpendicular. Once or twice I have even seen one jump over
the back of another. On another occasion we saw a herd of twenty-five or
thirty cross a road of which, evidently, they were a little suspicious.
We could not find a single hoof mark in the dust! Generally these beasts
frequent thin brush country; but I have three or four times seen them
quite out in the open flat plains, feeding with the hartebeeste and
zebra. They are about the size of our ordinary deer, are delicately
fashioned, and can utter the most incongruously grotesque of noises by
way of calls or ordinary conversation.

The lack of curiosity, or the lack of gallantry, of the impalla bucks
was, in my experience, quite characteristic. They were almost always the
farthest in the background and the first away when danger threatened.
The ladies could look out for themselves. They had no horns to save;
and what do the fool women mean by showing so little sense, anyway! They
deserve what they get! It used to amuse me a lot to observe the utter
abandonment of all responsibility by these handsome gentlemen. When it
came time to depart, they departed. Hang the girls! They trailed along
after as fast as they could.

The waterbuck-a fine large beast about the size of our caribou, a
well-conditioned buck resembling in form and attitude the finest
of Landseer's stags-on the other hand, had a little more sense of
responsibility, when he had anything to do with the sex at all. He was
hardly what you might call a strictly domestic character. I have hunted
through a country for several days at a time without seeing a single
mature buck of this species, although there were plenty of does, in
herds of ten to fifty, with a few infants among them just sprouting
horns. Then finally, in some small grassy valley, I would come on the
Men's Club. There they were, ten, twenty, thr