Missionary Travels and Researches in South AfricaLivingstone, David
Religion
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa
Livingstone, David
Missions -- South Africa; South Africa -- Description and travel
This district contains great numbers of a small antelope named Tianyane,
unknown in the south. It stands about eighteen inches high, is very
graceful in its movements, and utters a cry of alarm not unlike that of
the domestic fowl; it is of a brownish-red color on the sides and back,
with the belly and lower part of the tail white; it is very timid, but
the maternal affection that the little thing bears to its young will
often induce it to offer battle even to a man approaching it. When the
young one is too tender to run about with the dam, she puts one foot
on the prominence about the seventh cervical vertebra, or withers; the
instinct of the young enables it to understand that it is now required
to kneel down, and to remain quite still till it hears the bleating of
its dam. If you see an otherwise gregarious she-antelope separated from
the herd, and going alone any where, you may be sure she has laid her
little one to sleep in some cozy spot. The color of the hair in the
young is better adapted for assimilating it with the ground than that of
the older animals, which do not need to be screened from the observation
of birds of prey. I observed the Arabs at Aden, when making their camels
kneel down, press the thumb on the withers in exactly the same way the
antelopes do with their young; probably they have been led to the custom
by seeing this plan adopted by the gazelle of the Desert.
Great numbers of buffaloes, zebras, tsessebes, tahaetsi, and eland, or
pohu, grazed undisturbed on these plains, so that very little exertion
was required to secure a fair supply of meat for the party during the
necessary delay. Hunting on foot, as all those who have engaged in it in
this country will at once admit, is very hard work indeed. The heat of
the sun by day is so great, even in winter, as it now was, that, had
there been any one on whom I could have thrown the task, he would have
been most welcome to all the sport the toil is supposed to impart. But
the Makololo shot so badly, that, in order to save my powder, I was
obliged to go myself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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