was still lacking, and, to tell the truth, we had about given up hope,
if not our efforts. Almost we had begun to believe our friends in
Nairobi who had scoffed at the uselessness of our quest. Always we
conscientiously looked over good kudu country, hundreds of miles of it,
and always with the same lack of result, or even of encouragement. Other
game we saw in plenty, of a dozen different varieties, large and small;
but our five weeks' search had thus far yielded us only the sight of the
same old, old sign, made many months before. If you had stood with us
atop one of the mountains, and with us had looked abroad on the
countless leagues of rolling brush-clothed land, undulating away in all
directions over a far horizon, you must with us have estimated as very
slight the chances of happening on the exact pin point where the kudu at
that moment happened to be feeding. For the beast is shy, it inhabits
the densest, closest mountain cover, it possesses the keen eyesight and
sense of smell of the bush-dwelling deer and antelope, and more than the
average sense of hearing. There are very few of him. But the chief
discouragement is that arising from his roaming tendencies. Other rare
animals are apt to "use" about one locality, so that once the hunter
finds tracks, new or old, his game is one of patient, skilful search.
The greater kudu, however, seems in this country at least to be a
wanderer. He is here to-day and gone to-morrow. Systematic search seems
as foolish as in the case of the proverbial needle in the haystack. The
only method is to sift constantly, and trust to luck. One cannot catch
fish with the fly in the book, but one has at least a chance if one
keeps it on the water.

Mavrouki was the only one among us who had the living faith that comes
from having seen the animal in the flesh. That is a curious bit of
hunter psychology. When a man is out after a species new to him, it is
only by the utmost stretch of the imagination that he is able to realize
that such an animal can exist at all. He cannot prefigure it, somehow.
He generally exaggerates to himself the difficulty of making it out, of
approaching it, of getting his shot; until at last, if he happens to
have hunted some time in vain, the beast becomes almost mythical and
unbelievable. Once he has seen the animal, whether he gets a shot or
not, all this vanishes. The strain on faith relaxes. He knows what to
look for, and what to expect; and even if he sees no