iant red
hartebeest, and the noble gemsbok (prototype of the fabled unicorn).

This Kalahari forest scenery, flat though it is, is very beautiful,
resembling closely some English deer park, or the natural woodland of
some wild Surrey common.

The deep red glow of sunrise was now apparent through the trees to the
eastward, long streamers of rose-pink flew upwards in the pale sky; a
roller or two, brilliant in gorgeous colouring of metallic mauves and
violets, purples, blues, and greens, began to cry amid the forest, and
to flash hither and thither across the clearing. Dainty steinboks and
timid duykers (small antelopes, quite independent of water, to be found
all over the desert) rose stiff from their cold night couches, shook
themselves, and began to feed.

Suddenly a movement to the right attracts Nakeesa's attention. She
looks again, and an involuntary click of surprise and pleasure rises to
her tongue. She touches her man lightly. Sinikwe is awake and upon his
haunches in an instant; his narrow, bleared eyes seek what Nakeesa has
seen, and they watch together in a motionless silence.

From behind a spreading acacia tree, from which it has been plucking the
green leafage, strides into a little glade of the grove a great cow
giraffe. She is fat and fresh, her dappled, orange-tawny hide gleams
under the now risen sun with high condition, her great, melting, dark
eye is placid and free from fear. Timid creature though she is, in
these wilds she feels secure enough. She halts for a minute in the
glade, lazily champing at a bit of acacia leafage which projects from
her lips, and, raising her immense neck yet higher, and in the same
motion swinging her head easily round, looks behind for her fellows.
That giraffe cow, so plump, so well coloured, upon which Sinikwe's eye
is now fiercely rivetted, is young, but full grown. She measures
seventeen good feet from the base of her hoofs to the tip of her false
horns, as she stands there, and you may search all Africa--ay, all the
world--for a more wonderful, more beautiful picture of feral life in its
most primaeval form.

There is no air of wind blowing from the Masarwas towards the giraffe;
the breeze trends rather the other way, and they are safe from betrayal
by that foe. They are concealed from sight by the screen of bush
beneath which they crouch, and a few handfuls of sand, cast by Sinikwe
upon the smouldering fire, silently destroys that evidence of human
li