Part 29

Our figure of this species (Plate XCI.) has been drawn by Mr. Smit from the mounted specimen in the British Museum.

November, 1899.

126. ANGAS’ ANTELOPE.

TRAGELAPHUS ANGASI, Angas.

Tragelaphus angasi, =G. F. Angas=, P. Z. S. 1848, p. 89, pls. iv. (♂), v. (♀); =id.= Kaffirs Illustrated, p. 51, pl. xxix. (1849); =Gray=, P. Z. S. 1850, p. 144; =id.= Knowsl. Menag. p. 27 (1850); =id.= Cat. Ung. B. M. p. 138 (1852); =Proudf.= P. Z. S. 1850, p. 199; =Baldwin=, Afr. Hunt. p. 76 (1854); =Gerr.= Cat. Bones B. M. p. 246 (1862); =Fitz.= SB. Ak. Wien, lix. pt. 1, p. 174 (1869); =Brooke=, P. Z. S. 1871, p. 485; =id.= P. Z. S. 1878, p. 884 (cranial characters); =Buckley=, P. Z. S. 1876, p. 285; =Thomas=, P. Z. S. 1891, p. 387; =Flow. & Lyd.= Mamm. p. 347 (1891); =Scl.= P. Z. S. 1892, p. 98 (Shiré R.); =Ward=, Horn Meas. p. 157 (1892); =id.= Rec. Big Game, p. 200 (1896); =Lyd.= Horns and Hoofs, p. 252 (1893); =Scl.= P. Z. S. 1893, p. 729 (B. C. Afr.); =Lyd.= Roy. Nat. Hist. ii. p. 275 (1894); =Rendall=, P. Z. S. 1895, p. 359 (R. Tembé); =Thomas=, P. Z. S. 1896, p. 798, 1897, p. 939 (B. C. Afr.); =Pousarg.= Ann. Sci. Nat. iv. p. 81 (1897); =Johnston=, Brit. Centr. Africa, p. 305 (1897); =Rendall=, Novitat. Zool. v. p. 212 (1898); =Trouess.= Cat. Mamm. p. 957 (1898); =Selous=, =Sharpe=, and =Neumann=, in Ward’s Great and Small Game of Africa, pp. 455–462, fig. 39, & pl. xiii. fig. 4 (1899).

Strepsiceros angasi, =Turner=, P. Z. S. 1850, p. 171.

Euryceros angasii, =Gray=, Cat. Rum. B. M. p. 48 (1872); =id.= Hand-l. Rum. B. M. p. 119 (1873).

Vernacular Names:—Inyala of the Amatongas; Bö of the Shiré districts.

Height at withers of adult male about 42 inches; of lighter and more graceful build than T. eurycerus. General colour of head, neck, and body a slate-grey, with a tinge of yellowish red. Head with forehead reddish, and area around eye fawn-coloured; upper lip and chin white; two widely-separated white cheek-spots on each side; v-shaped white nasal stripe distinct and mesially divided. Back of ear white below, tan above. Neck distinctly darker in hue than the shoulder and rest of the body; a transverse white patch at the lower end of throat; no corresponding patch at upper extremity of throat. Body from shoulder to root of tail marked with indications of about fourteen pale transverse stripes, some six of these standing out more clearly than the rest; a few white spots, mostly low down upon the haunches. Tail nearly black above, at sides, and at tip; white below. Fore legs black above the knee on the outer side and on inner side halfway up to the chest; a large white patch above close to chest; knee also white on inner side and behind; portion between knee and fetlock a rich fawn-colour; fetlocks and pasterns black behind and above the hoofs in front; a white spot on the inner side of fetlocks, and two on front of the pastern. Hind leg coloured like the front leg, with the front and inner side of the thigh and of the hock white, the two white patches separated by a black band; no white patch on the inner side of the fetlock.

Long mane of dark hair extending almost from chin along throat, chest, and each side of belly, and fringing the front of the thigh almost to the hock, and the back of it up to the root of the tail. There is also a dorsal mane extending from the nape to the neck, reversed from the base of the neck; the hairs black or brown in colour along the nape of the neck from the occiput to the shoulder, tipped with white from the shoulders to the tail. Tail cervine, thickly hairy throughout.

Horns black, pale amber-coloured at the tips, ridged in the basal half; about 29 inches long round the curve, and 24 in a straight line; usually with a single, and rarely with a double, curvature.

The skull of an adult male gives the following measurements:—Basal length 12 inches, orbit to muzzle a little over 7, width almost 5.

Female without horns and strikingly different from the male in colour. General colour a bright chestnut. Sides of the body and haunches marked with about eleven white stripes, those behind shoulder reaching almost to the ventral surface; ventral surface pale yellow; a few white spots on the haunches. Nose marked with a broad black band, which extends laterally on to the muzzle; a narrow black dorsal stripe, extending from the occiput to the root of the tail, intersected with white where the lateral stripes cross it. No mane on any part of neck, body, or hind-quarters.

Hab. South-eastern Africa, from Zululand to Southern Nyasaland.

The discoverer of this fine Antelope, the late Mr. George French Angas, was an accomplished artist and traveller, and the author of several books on Africa and Australia. Angas first met with this species on the northern shores of St. Lucia Bay, in Zululand, during his journeyings in that district in 1847. Here, he tells us, it inhabits the low undulating hills, scattered with mimosa-bushes, which border the northern shores of the Bay. On returning to England, Angas showed his notes and sketches of this Antelope to the late Dr. Gray, who assured him of its being an animal new to science, and communicated them to the Zoological Society of London in the name of the discoverer. Angas was not successful in obtaining specimens for himself, as the Boers, he tells us, refused to part with them, and the two plates which illustrate his paper in the Zoological Society’s ‘Proceedings’ were lithographed by Waterhouse Hawkins from his notes and sketches. It should also be mentioned that the Antelope was named, not after Angas himself, but after his father, Mr. George Fife Angas, of South Australia, who, we are told, had always “taken great interest” in his son’s travels and researches in natural history. In a folio work called ‘Kaffirs Illustrated,’ published in 1849, Angas again figured this Antelope, on a plate containing representations of the male, female, and young, but did not furnish any further particulars concerning its life and habits.

The next observer of Angas’ Antelope in its native wilds appears to have been a well-known hunter, Proudfoot, who met with it on the banks of the Maputa River, about sixty miles above its embochure into Delagoa Bay, and exhibited specimens of both sexes, shot by himself, at a meeting of the Zoological Society of London on July 9th, 1851. On the Maputa, Mr. Proudfoot stated, on exhibiting his specimens, that the Inyala, as the natives call it, was at that time more plentiful than on the Umcoozi or Umbelozi, in the same district, where it was found, though rarely. “They occur in small troops composed of one ram and four or five females, with their young: they always resort to the densest bush, and browse chiefly on shrubs.”

In June 1854 the well-known African sportsman, William Charles Baldwin, was in Amatonga-land, on a hunting expedition from Natal. On the 25th of that month, as he tells us in his ‘African Hunting,’ he met with the first “Inyalas” he had ever seen, and succeeded in bagging a fine male, and subsequently more of them in the same district. A tinted lithographic plate in Baldwin’s volume, drawn by Wolf, contains an excellent representation of a group of these Antelopes.

In 1871 the late Sir Victor Brooke published in the ‘Proceedings’ of the Zoological Society a figure of the head and horns of this Antelope, taken from a specimen in his own Collection. This figure, by the kind permission of that Society, we are now enabled to reproduce (fig. 105).

The Hon. W. H. Drummond, another well-known sportsman, who was in South Africa from 1867 to 1872, writes of the “Nyala” as perhaps the most beautiful of all the Antelopes he had seen there. “Unfortunately,” he says, “it does not exist except in low, fever-stricken districts, and I have never seen it south of the Bombo Range, about 28° S. lat., where it frequents the densest thickets it can find, and is wary and difficult to stalk.” Mr. Drummond also, in his volume on the ‘Large Game of South and South-east Africa,’ has given a lithographic plate with figures of both sexes of this animal.

When he wrote his ‘Hunter’s Wanderings,’ in 1881, Mr. Selous, our leading authority on the game-mammals of South Africa, had never seen a living example of this Antelope. But in September 1896 he made a successful expedition to Amatonga-land in search of it, and subsequently wrote an account of his adventures on this occasion in ‘The Field’ newspaper, from which, by his kind consent, we make the following extracts.

Arriving at Lourenço Marques on September 21st, he was invited by a Mr. Wissels, a Cape colonist of German extraction, to visit his station near the junction of the Pongolo and Usutu Rivers, where Inyalas were said to be plentiful, and arrived there after a long tramp of several days through the swampy forests.

We will give Mr. Selous’s account of his hunt after Inyalas in this district in his own words:—

“There were now abundant signs that I was approaching the haunts of the beautiful Antelope I had come so far to seek, as Inyala horns and skins were very much in evidence round Mr. Wissels’s store, and several of the latter had manifestly been but recently killed.

“All these animals, I was assured, had been shot by the Amatonga within a short distance of the store, in the dense jungles lying in the angle between the Usutu and Pongolo Rivers, which I could now see covering some low ridges at a distance of not more than six or seven miles from where we stood. Had it not been for the rain, I should have gone on the same afternoon; however, I gathered a good deal of information, and arranged for a start with fresh carriers as early as possible the following day—my objective point being the kraal of an Amatonga head-man named Gugawi, who, I was told, lived a few miles up the Usutu River, on the very edge of the jungle where Inyala were said to be plentiful. I noticed, however, that my informants were not over confident about my being likely to shoot any of these animals.

“That night we had a most tremendous thunderstorm, the rain falling in torrents; and, as the place in which I was sleeping was not water-tight, I had rather a bad time of it, and was very glad when day broke.

“The thunderstorm had cleared the air, and Sunday, Sept. 27, dawned bright and clear, with every prospect of its being a fine day. I had all my things packed up pretty early, and with four new women-carriers, and accompanied by two men who knew the way to Gugawi’s kraal, managed to get off about an hour after sunrise, and reached my destination before 10 o’clock. On our way we crossed the Usutu River—here a clear, swift-flowing stream, about 200 yards in breadth, running over a bed of sand. We waded across it, and found the water quite shallow for the most part, and never more than 3 feet deep.

“On reaching the kraal we were making for, I told Longman to cook me some breakfast, and whilst he was frying me some Reedbuck steaks, I had a talk with the head-man, Gugawi, and told him the reason of my visit. He replied that the ‘unbala-intendi’ were numerous in the jungle just behind his kraal, and promised to do his best to help me to secure the specimens I wanted, though, like everyone else, he said the animals were very cunning and difficult to get a sight of. As soon as I had had my breakfast I asked Gugawi to give me a man who was well acquainted with the habits of the Inyala, as I wished to go into the bush after them without any loss of time. He gave me one of his sons, and, accompanied by Longman and one of the Kaffirs who had come from Mr. Wissels’ store, we forthwith entered the jungle, which extended to within a few yards of the kraal. From this we were not distant more than 200 yards before we saw fresh Inyala-spoor plainly imprinted in the wet ground. The rain at least had done us this service, that it had washed out all old spoor and rendered any fresh tracks quite conspicuous. We now commenced to creep very cautiously through the thick thorny bush, making our way for the most part through tunnels made by hippopotami during their night excursions in search of food. We had usually to walk bent nearly double, often having to creep on our hands and knees; and, as the air was now very hot and steamy, we were soon bathed in perspiration. Now and again we came to little open spaces in the bush, and in one of these which we passed through soon after leaving the kraal I saw a very handsome Crested Guinea-fowl, which looked very much like the birds I have seen on the Central Zambesi, to the east of the Victoria Falls.

“We had been creeping about the bush in the uncomfortable manner I have described for about an hour, when we came suddenly upon a little circular opening some fifty or sixty yards in diameter. As we approached the edge of this open space, advancing very cautiously in a stooping attitude down a hippopotamus-path, my guide suddenly dropped to the ground. As he did so, I got a clear view past him, and saw standing amongst the grass and bush, just on the further side of the opening, what I knew was an Inyala ewe, as I could distinctly see it was reddish in colour. I could see no other animal near her, and, as I required two specimens of Inyala ewes, the one for the British and the other for the South-African Museum, I lost no time about firing at the animal in question, which I saw drop instantly to the shot. But even as she did so, there appeared in her place, or very close to where she had stood, a great black shaggy form, which, indistinctly as I could see it in the deep shadow of the bush, I knew was an Inyala ram, the first that my eyes had ever looked upon in the flesh. My rifle was a single-barrelled one; and before I could fire the shot that might make that rare and beautiful beast mine, I had to open the breech of my rifle, take another cartridge from my belt, slip it into the chamber, close the breech again, and then raise the rifle to my shoulder and take aim. All this meant time and noise. Would the Inyala, which stood like a statue by the dead body of its mate, give me the few seconds I required to take his own life too? I little thought he would; but he did; and as I raised my rifle once more, and took a quick but careful sight at his dark shoulder, I felt, as I pulled the trigger, that he was mine.