One of these rambles into the woods led to a singular hunting adventure, which could only occur in Central Africa. I had been sitting crouched up for half an hour or more under the shade of a butter-tree, in the midst of some tall grass, and, engaged in the dissection of my plants, I had quite forgotten where I was. My three attendants were enjoying, as they were accustomed, a peaceful doze; stillness reigned so supreme in the solitude that one could almost hear the tread of every emmet on the soil, as backwards and forwards it hurried to the laboratory within its hill. All at once a huge shadow came in sight, and looking up I saw, just within pistol-range, the great form of a buck antelope. I was struck as much with admiration as with surprise: the creature had seemed to come suddenly from the earth. My heart fluttered at the apparition, but I could not be otherwise than sensible of its beauty. It was a specimen of the bastard gems-bok (_Antilope leucophæa_). Except on the belly, which was white, its long hair was all of a brownish grey. It carried its head erect; its ears were long and pointed; its horns massive and very long; its black legs going off into white fetlocks. A stiff mane of bright brown crested its curved neck, and reached to its withers. It had a tail like the giraffe, with which it wisped off the flies—a tuft of hair of about nine inches in length appended to a long slim stem. There it stood, majestically, I might say, like a stately buffalo when it surveys the region all around before it trusts itself to feed. There it stood, in an attitude at once commanding and defiant. Whenever it moved the grass crackled beneath its tread, and ere long it shifted its place again and turned its full face towards me. I cautiously reached out my hand for a rifle that was lying near me, pushed back the guard, and, at the next movement of the beast, hit it with a ball right upon the shoulder-blade from a distance of about twenty paces. The creature reared itself up, then paused an instant, staggered, and let its head sink down as if amazed. I was just about to get hold of a second rifle when there came a sudden crash, and, while I was still sitting, the animal had fallen just beyond the open portfolio which was lying outspread before me. Fortune had thus cast the noble prey right into my clutches. [Illustration: Central African Bastard Gemsbok (_Antilope leucophæa_).]