After some time we see that it is an old and unusually large bull; he, too, has gradually taken the same line as his two colleagues. Our observation proves to be correct, and we also remark before long that the first pair of rhinoceroses we had noticed is made up of an old cow and her nearly grown up young one.
More herds of zebras and gnus, and small troops of Grant’s gazelles and of impallah-antelopes have come into sight, and now they are joined by a whole crowd of hartebeests, which so far have kept themselves hidden in a side valley of the velt full of thick tall grass.
And now the moving mass of animal life is ever more abundant, more varied. I notice in the valley at the foot of my hill a string of guinea-fowl; how they hurry and scurry about, flutter up with sounding strokes of their wings, and then soon drop down again! And now my attention is attracted by a pair of Bateleur eagles, that wheel in the air, and enjoy themselves for an hour at a time playing on the wing. They probably have made their eyrie not far from this spot.
MASAI HARTEBEESTS (_BUBALUS COKEI_, Gth.) (THE “KONGONI” OF THE SWAHILI, “OL-KONDI” OR “OL-LUDJULUDJULA” OF THE MASAI).]
GIRAFFE GAZELLE (_LITHOCRANIUS WALLERI_, Brooke) STANDING IN ITS CHARACTERISTIC ATTITUDE BEFORE TAKING TO FLIGHT.]
For minutes at a time the cry of the francolin rings out clearly round about my post; then again it is silent. My eyes can indeed see animals of many kinds, and my sight ranges with restless efforts over the far distance; but so far I have looked in vain for a form that is frequent and familiar enough in this wilderness--the towering figure of the “Twigga.”
Where can the giraffes be hiding to-day? Why have they not come out to the still freshly green acacias in the far-stretching hollow to my left, where I have already marked their presence for whole days at a time?
And yet they are there, only I had failed to distinguish them. At last I can make out their strange forms, as they graze there among the acacias, and they stand out sharply under the oblique rays of the sun.
What poetry there is in the movements of all the various organisms that our eyes behold! Every variety of gait, from the heavy, swinging, and nevertheless rapid march of the pachyderms to the graceful speed of a pretty gazelle, speaks in a language of its own to him who has become familiar with the peculiar movements of this animal world. Just as at the outset the strange appearance of an animal one sees for the first time makes a surprisingly strong impression on one, so too does the great difference in the gait of the various species. But they were all soon familiar to me. So now at the sight of the giraffes I feel a pleasure and delight in their quaint coming and going, their heads appearing and disappearing, there below me in the midst of the green bowers of mimosa leaves, high over which my view ranges. What laws must be at work here too, by whose operation I am compelled to feel all this to be so beautiful, so harmonious, so splendid! I grasp the meaning of the words: “Therefore I believe that life will first open its eyes in that world of which Goethe said: ‘There is still the life of life, and this is only form.’”[32]