The book of antelopes, vol. 4 (of 4)Sclater, Philip Lutley
Science
The book of antelopes, vol. 4 (of 4)
Sclater, Philip Lutley
Antelopes
doubt that this statement is correct. Another way the natives have
of killing them is by setting fire to the reeds when they become
quite dry, and then waiting for the Situtungas in their canoes in
one of the channels of open water by which the marsh is
intersected. Driven forwards by the advancing fire, the Antelopes
are at last obliged to swim across the open water to gain the
shelter of the reeds on the further side; and the natives are thus
often enabled to cut off and assegai some of them in mid stream.”
We have already alluded to the occurrence of this species in
Barotze-land, where Mr. Coryndon obtained specimens for Mr. Rothschild.
Still further to the north-east we find that a species of the
Sitatunga group, which, we suppose, should also be referred to _L.
selousi_, occurs, according to Sir Harry Johnston, “in the swamps
of Lake Mweru, in the Loangwa valley, and in other parts of British
Central Africa.” Mr. Richard Crawshay, C.M.Z.S., has favoured us with
the following field-notes which he has drawn up as the result of his
long experience with the animal-life of the district of Lake Mweru:—
“This Antelope is known by the people of the Itawa and Kabwiri—who
are, as I have before mentioned, branches of the Awemba—as ‘Mula.’
By the people of Ulungu and Mambwe (where I suppose it is also
found) it is known as ‘Nsowi.’
“I had been six months or more at Mweru before any proof was
forthcoming that such an animal existed. Then, when shooting wild-
fowl on the outskirts of a vast and impenetrable swamp between
Rhodesia and the Luao River, I came upon the remains of what had
been a fine pair of horns just on the margin of the water. The
horns had been submerged during the rains and were fast decaying.
All that was recoverable was one fairly sound horn with a fragment
of the frontal bone attached. This horn, I think, measured 21¾
inches.
“Some months later when at Mkula’s, on the Chisela River, I was
given by the chief a perfect, though smaller, pair of horns. A
skin was also offered me—I don’t know if it was _the_ skin—but so
discoloured with dirt and smoke, from lying in a native hut, that
I did not think it worth having.
“Mkula told me there were a good many ‘Mula’ in the swamps below
his town, and that one way or another his people had killed seven
or eight during the six years or so he had been at the Chisela
River, but that they were very difficult to get at, and when got
at—viz., roused—even more difficult to kill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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