Part 31

VERNACULAR NAMES:--Abu el harabat or Abu el haráb in Arabic (Heuglin); Reem of Arabs in Algeria (Loder); Ghazal abiad (White Gazelle) of Arabs in Tunis and Egypt (Whitaker & Bramley).

Height of male at withers about 25 inches. General colour very pale sandy fawn, the Gazelline markings little defined. Central facial band and darker cheek-bands sandy, not rufous, and but little contrasting with the light facial streaks. Light lateral bands scarcely perceptible, and the darker ones below them only pale sandy with a tinge of brownish, as are the pygal bands, neither being much darker than the general dorsal colour. Ears long, narrow, pointed, pale whitish buff externally. Tail sandy at base, darkening terminally to brownish black. Front of fore limbs sandy, of hind limbs whitish; knee-brushes distinct, but little darker than the general colour. Hoofs variable in shape, those of specimens from the sandy regions of the Sahara much elongated, while in other regions they are of the usual shape.

Skull of normal proportions; premaxillæ broadly articulating with nasals. Basal length in an old male 6·45 inches, greatest breadth 3·3, muzzle to orbit 3·6.

Horns of male long, about twice the length of the skull, slender, closely and heavily ringed nearly to the tip. They are very variable as to their exact curvature, but are ordinarily rather straighter than in other species, curving but slightly backwards; they are near together basally, diverging above, sometimes very widely, so as to make them resemble divergent horns of G. granti in miniature.

Female. Similar to the male, but the horns, although nearly equally long, are much slenderer and even less curved than in the male.

Hab. Sandy tracts of the interior of Algeria, Tunisia, and Western Egypt, south to Nubia and Sennaar.

The great folio work of Geoffrey St.-Hilaire and Frédéric Cuvier entitled ‘Histoire Naturelle des Mammifères,’ which was issued in livraisons from 1824 to 1842, contains a long series of coloured figures of mammals, mostly taken from examples living in the well-known Menagerie attached to the Jardin des Plantes. Amongst these in the seventy-second livraison, published in 1842, were the first descriptions and figures given of both sexes of the present Gazelle, from examples stated to have been brought from Sennaar by Burton. They had lived in the Menagerie, we are told, two years, and had bred a young one, which resembled its parents in most particulars. The appropriate scientific name “leptoceros,” from the long thin horns, had been given to this species, we are informed, by Georges Cuvier, and was adopted by the authors of the work referred to, who, however, called it at the head of their article, after their usual fashion, only by the French name “Antilope à longues cornes.”

Very little more information was acquired concerning this Gazelle for many years. Most of the systematists were entirely unacquainted with it, and could only quote the original descriptions. Sundevall and Gray considered it to be merely a variety of Gazella dorcas. Rüppell, during his extensive travels in East Africa, seems never to have come across it, and does not mention it in any of his publications.

The first author after its describers to recognize its existence was Heuglin, who in 1877, in the second volume of his ‘Reise in Nordost-Afrika,’ writes of this species, the name of which he had previously misapplied to another Gazelle, and gives a coloured figure of its head and figures of two pairs of its horns. Heuglin met with G. leptoceros in the Libyan desert of Egypt, near the Natron Lakes and the Fayoum, where he states its Arabic name is “Abu el haráb.”

Sir Victor Brooke had never seen specimens of this Gazelle, and in his ‘Monograph’ relies mainly upon Heuglin’s description.

So matters remained until recent years, when examples of this Gazelle, or of a very closely allied form, turned up unexpectedly from a new quarter.

Loche, Lataste, and other authorities on the zoology of Algeria had mentioned the existence far in the interior of that country of an Antelope called “El Rim,” and examples of the horns of a problematical Gazelle called “El Reem” had been brought to England from the shops at Biskra. In 1894 an enthusiastic sportsman and naturalist, Sir Edmund Loder, F.Z.S., resolved to make a serious attempt to discover this mysterious animal, and proceeded to Algeria for that purpose. We cannot do better than transcribe for our readers Sir Edmund’s own account of the results of this successful expedition, which was read before the Zoological Society of London on June 5th, 1894:--

“Seventeen years ago (in 1877) I bought in the bazaar at Biskra several pairs of Gazelle horns. They obviously belonged to three species: Gazella dorcas, called by the Arabs ‘Rezal’; Gazella cuvieri, which they call ‘Admi’; and a third called ‘Reem,’ which I was not able to identify with any described species. All these horns were on frontal bones only. It is very rarely that the Arabs bring in any whole skulls or skins for sale, and I have never seen anything but frontlets of the ‘Reem.’

“In 1891 and again in 1893 I went out to Algeria for the purpose of hunting Mouflon (Ovis tragelaphus).

“In 1877 I had been prevented from going after them except for a few hours at a time. On these later trips I was more successful and secured some fine male Mouflon, a female of the large Mountain Gazelle (Gazella cuvieri), and a few specimens of Gazella dorcas.

“At Biskra I again found horns of the Reem, but got no information about it except that it was reported to live in the sand. I heard a French name for it for the first time, ‘Gazelle des sables.’

“As my friend Mr. Alfred Pease was spending a second winter at Biskra and had made the acquaintance of several native hunters, I requested him to try what he could do to find out the habitat of the Reem. About Christmas-time last year he wrote to me that he believed he had reliable information that the Reem was to be found in the desert near Chegga, only about 50 kilometres south of Biskra on the caravan-route to Touggourt.

“We made arrangements for a camping trip, and I left England on February 1st, and started from Biskra with Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Pease on February 8th of this year.

“After two days’ marching we got to Chegga and made inquiries respecting the Reem. No one seemed to know anything about the animal except one Arab, who said that if we went on farther south we should come to a place called Ain Gebberah, where there were a few Reem, but if we went on still farther to Hamraia we should find the Reem in quantities.

“We therefore travelled on for two or three more days until we came to Hamraia, but on making inquiries about the Reem the answers were very unsatisfactory. We determined, however, before giving up the search, to stay here a day to hunt and see what game there was in this part of the desert.

“In the early morning of the next day Pease started off from camp with an Arab in one direction, while I went off in the other. By the evening we had covered a considerable extent of country and had used our glasses from every available rise in the ground. We saw several small herds of Gazella dorcas, but no tracks even of any other Gazelle. We did not seem to be any nearer to obtaining a Reem than when we started from Biskra.

“At night, when we got back to camp, we were told that a negro camel-herd had been there during the day, and had said that we were not at all in the right country for Reem, that he was well acquainted with the animal and knew where it was to be found. He came into camp again the next morning and told us that the Reem had long slender hoofs and tender feet, lived only in the soft sand, and would be unable to run on hard stony desert such as that round Hamraia. He said he could take us to the Reem country, in rolling sand-hills, but we should not be able to camp very near as there was no water for our horses and pack-animals.

“We agreed to go with him, and he led us a day’s march still farther south towards the Oued Souf, and then turned off the caravan-track to the east and chose a camp in the sand about an hour and a half from water. (Almost all the water in the desert is brackish and bad, but the water here was positively nasty.)

“The next morning we left camp very early on horseback, with the negro on foot and an Arab hunter riding a mule. The negro led the way at a tremendous pace, keeping up a good trot in the soft sand and sometimes running fast for a couple of miles without a stop across the dry arm of a chott, keeping us at a hand-gallop most of the time.

“After two hours and a half the negro pointed out the first track of the Reem, which is quite easily to be distinguished from that of Gazella dorcas from its much greater length. We now unsaddled the horses, tied them up, and went off in two parties to hunt for Reem. The negro led the way in front of me, going slowly and with great caution, as the Reem is extremely wary and against the nearly white sand can detect a moving object a long way off. We had not walked very far when we saw the head of a Reem looking over the top of a sand-ridge at about 300 yards distance. We stayed for a long time perfectly still behind a tuft of tall alpha grass, till at last the head disappeared. As soon as it was out of sight we ran as hard as we could across the bare sand to the top of the next ridge, and again sheltered ourselves behind a tuft of alpha. When we looked out cautiously we saw that the Reem had moved on to another sand-hill more to our left, and was again showing just the top of his head over it. We had, however, considerably reduced the distance. Again he stopped perfectly still for a long time and then turned and moved off. We ran to another ridge, and I caught sight of him trotting to the top of the sand-hill beyond at about 150 yards. At the top he turned and I fired at once and got him. A lucky shot! as the distance was long for so small an animal. It was a good male, with horns 13 inches long. I have not seen any much longer than these.

“After taking the Reem back to the place where we had left the horses, we started off again, and during the day saw several small lots containing both males and females (4, 5, and 2), but did not get a chance of another shot. Pease also saw a few.

“We hunted the sand-hills for two more days; on the third day our negro guide took us much farther from camp, running before us with surprising speed and endurance for three and a half hours before we halted and tied up our horses. In the evening, after walking all day in a hot sun and on soft sand, he showed himself still untired and ready to run at the same pace back again to camp. This remarkable man said that he had lived for seven years in the desert without sleeping in a house or tent, and had hardly tasted water, meat, or bread; during the whole of that time his food consisted of dates and camel’s milk, and he attributed his strength to this diet. The long distance of our camp from the sand-hills where the Reem is found was a great hindrance, as we could not hunt for them at the time they were feeding. By the time we got to the ground they were already lying down for the day, generally on the top of the sand-ridges, and keeping a watchful look-out. We saw several small herds each day, but neither of us ever got another chance of a shot.

“We were lucky in having calm weather, as a sand-storm in that country is a very serious matter. The air gets as thick as during a bad London fog and one cannot see even a few yards ahead, making it quite impossible to regain camp, all tracks being blotted out in a few minutes by the wind. Our experience of sand-storms was limited to one day, our last day in the desert, luckily for us well outside the region of the sand-hills, when leaving our caravan behind we rode in 50 kilometres to Biskra in the teeth of a cutting wind filled with dust and sand, an extremely painful experience; but we were in no danger of losing our way as we were then on the broad track worn by the caravans travelling between Biskra and Touggourt.