At First This Continual Alertness And Tension Is Rather
Exhausting; But After A Very Short Time It Becomes Second Nature.
A sudden rustle the other side a bush no longer brings you up all
standing with your heart in your
Throat; but you are aware of it,
and you are facing the possible danger almost before your slower
brain has issued any orders to that effect.
In rereading the above, I am afraid that I am conveying the idea
that one here walks under the shadow of continual uneasiness.
This is not in the least so. One enjoys the sun, and the birds
and the little things. He cultivates the great leisure of mind
that shall fill the breadth of his outlook abroad over a newly
wonderful world. But underneath it all is the alertness, the
responsiveness to quick reflexes of judgment and action, the
intimate correlations to immediate environment which must
characterize the instincts of the higher animals. And it is good
to live these things.
Along the edge of that river jungle were many strange and
beautiful affairs. I could slip along among the high clumps of
the thicker bushes in such a manner as to be continually coming
around unexpected bends. Of such maneouvres are surprises made.
The graceful red impalla were here very abundant. I would come on
them, their heads up, their great ears flung forward, their noses
twitching in inquiry of something they suspected but could not
fully sense. 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!
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