Part 35

?? Antilope torticornis, =Herm.= Obs. Zool. i. p. 87.

Cerf du Cap de Bonne-Espérance, =Colini=, Acta Acad. Theod. Palat. pp. 487–491, pl. (1766).

Striped Antelope, =Penn.= Syn. Quadr. pp. 31, 224 (1771); =id.= Hist. of Quadr. (1) i, p. 76, (3) i. p. 88, pl. xiv.

Koedoe, =Sparrm.= Reise, p. 511 (1784); Engl. Tr. ii. p. 213 (1786); French Tr. p. 237 (1787).

Le Condoma, =Huet=, Coll. Mamm. Mus. d’Hist. Nat. p. 47, pl. xli. fig. 1 (1808).

The Koodoo, =Daniell=, Afr. Scenery, no. 6 (1812); =Baldwin=, Afr. Hunting, p. 376 (1863); =Johnston=, Kilima-Njaro Exped. pp. 301, 354 (and of most English sportsmen and naturalists).

Vernacular Names:—Koedoe of the Dutch, and Kudu or Koodoo of the English Colonists at the Cape; Tolo of Bechuana; Ee-bala-bala of Amandables; Ee-zilarwa of Makalakas; Noro of Mashunas; Unza of Masubias; Unzwa of Makubas; Muzeelona of Batongas; Dwar of Masuras (Selous). Unganxa of Kaffirs (Drummond). Mivimveh, Njellet, Neled, and Jelled of the Arabs of the Upper Nile; Garna or Qarna and Nellet at Massaua; Ungŭtir of Hamran Arabs; Agasehn, A’gasen, and Agasen in Amharic (Heuglin). Goder and Gouriali in Somaliland (Swayne).

Adult male. Height at withers about 50–52 inches. General colour of body varying from reddish to pale slaty bluish grey, the latter especially prevalent in older animals, and perhaps due, in part, to the scantiness of the hair revealing the tint of the skin. Neck brown on each side at its base and darker than the shoulders, becoming paler towards its anterior extremity. Head darker fawn than the anterior end of the neck, whitish around the eye, a white bar running inwards from the corner of each eye and forming an incomplete v-shaped mark on the nose; two or three white cheek-spots; edge of the upper lip and chin white, the white of the chin extending back on to the fore part of the inter-ramal area. From the middle of this area back to the hinder end of the throat extends a thickish mane of white and blackish-brown hairs; no white patches on the throat. There is also a dorsal mane passing from the occiput, backwards along the nape, over the withers and down the spine to the root of the tail; the mane brown on the neck and shoulders, white along the back. Sides of the body and hind-quarters marked with white stripes, which vary in number from about four in the northern forms to about nine or ten in the southern. Tail white below, black at the tip. Belly greyish, blacker in the middle. Fore legs of a rich fawn down the front, whitish at the base on inner side and behind the knee, also on the inner and posterior side of the cannon-bone, a pale blackish-brown patch above the knee on the inner side; fetlocks and pasterns also rich fawn, black behind; the white pastern-spots only just traceable. Hind leg coloured like the fore leg; inner side of the thigh at the base and anterior side down to the hock white, the white fading away between the hock and the pastern.

Horns with bold and open spiral curvature, measuring about 40 inches or more in a straight line, and an additional 12 inches or so round the curve; distance between the tips varying, irrespective of the length, from about 24 to nearly 40 inches. The skull of an adult gives the following measurements:—Basal length 15 inches, orbit to muzzle 9, greatest width 6·33.

Female. Generally similar to the male, but hornless and smaller and slighter; similarly marked with white, but the ground-colour of the body of a tolerably uniform fawn, becoming darker above.

Young redder in colour than the adult and strongly marked with white.

Hab. Africa south of the Zambesi, extending on the west into Angola, and on the east throughout East Africa up to Abyssinia, mostly in the higher districts.

We come now to one of the largest and finest of the whole long series of African Antelopes. In Mr. John Millais’s well-known ‘Breath from the Veldt,’ drawings of the heads of the Sable Antelope and the Kudu occupy a conspicuous position on the cover. Mr. Millais, than whom there can be no better judge, although he rather gives the palm to the Sable, admits that the Kudu surpasses its rival “in elegance and general appearance” when dead, but gives the Sable preference when seen alive on the veldt. It is really a difficult question, he allows, to decide between the “two rival beauties.” But we will proceed to the history of the Kudu.

Although the Kudu was certainly known to Kolben and other visitors to the Cape in early days, Buffon was the first writer to give us a good account of it. In the twelfth volume of his ‘Histoire Naturelle,’ published in 1764, Buffon introduced it into his work under the title of “Le Condoma,” and gave a figure of its unmistakable horns from a pair in the possession of the Marquis de Marigny. In these horns Buffon recognized the animal previously indicated by Kolben as a “kind of large Wild Goat.” In the sixth volume of the Supplement to the ‘Histoire Naturelle,’ published in 1782, Buffon entered into fuller particulars of the Kudu, which he now called the “Condoma ou Coësdoës,” apparently recognizing that the first of these names had been based on a mistake or misspelling. He was also now able to give a figure of the whole animal from a well-preserved skin received from “the interior of Africa.” Further information was added, taken from the Dutch edition of the ‘Histoire Naturelle,’ which had been then recently published by Schneider in Amsterdam, and to which Prof. Allamand had contributed a description of this animal, based on a specimen living in 1776 in the Menagerie of the Prince of Orange, to whom it had been sent by Joachim van Plattenberg, then Dutch Governor of the Cape. In his first essay on the genus Antilope, published in 1766, the great naturalist, Pallas, placed the Kudu sixteenth in his list, basing it mainly on the “Condoma” of Buffon, and proposed for it the specific name “strepsiceros.” Although, therefore, the Kudu could not have been the Strepsiceros of classical authors (which was in all probability the Addax), there can be no question that the Antilope strepsiceros of Pallas, as based on Buffon’s “Condoma,” is this species.

In 1827, Hamilton Smith, writing on the Mammals in Griffith’s ‘Animal Kingdom,’ used the term Strepsiceros as one of the subgeneric divisions of his genus Damalis, thus, according to the views of modern systematists, creating a new generic name, which has ever since been universally employed for the Kudu. Although many authorities are of opinion that the adoption of a specific name for the genus ought not to interfere with its usage for the species also, and consequently that the present animal ought to be called Strepsiceros strepsiceros, such has not been our custom in the present work, and it is consequently necessary to search out the second given specific name. For this there may be said to be two generally recognized claimants—first, “capensis,” bestowed upon it by Dr. Andrew Smith in 1834; and, secondly, “kudu,” applied to it by Gray in 1843. Of these we are inclined to adopt the former as first given, although the latter has been more generally accepted.

It is true no doubt that so long ago as 1816, in his ‘Lehrbuch der Zoologie,’ Oken introduced the Kudu into his list of the species of the genus “Cemas” under the heading “C. kuhdu, Strepsiceros, Cervus capensis.” But it does not seem to be quite certain that Oken hereby intended to bestow on the Kudu a new specific name, and under these circumstances it would be objectionable, we think, to call the Kudu, Strepsiceros kuhdu (Oken). It has therefore been decided to employ Andrew Smith’s name, concerning which there can be no doubt whatever, for the present Antelope, and to designate it Strepsiceros capensis.

The well-known travellers Sparrman (1785), Thunberg (1795), Daniell (1804), Burchell (1822), and Steedman (1835), all met with the Kudu during their journeyings in different parts of the Cape Colony, in the more remote parts of which it was still plentiful in their days. Harris (1836–37) states that although at that period the Kudu was still found in many of the more retired portions of the Colony, he did not himself meet with it until he had entered the “prolific environs” of the Cashaan Mountains of Pretoria. Harris claims for the Kudu the “right and title to the sovereignty of all the Antelopes.” Other species of this group, he allows, may be “stately, elegant, or curious,” but the Kudu is “absolutely regal.”

Harris, in the letterpress to his ‘Portraits,’ describes the habits of the Kudu in the Cashaan Mountains in the following lively manner:—

“There in the depths of solitary woods, by human foot untrod, the noble animal occurs in such every-day abundance, that many a gory trophy was realized; but his great sagacity, wildness, and self- possession, demanding the most skilful generalship to out-manæuvre him, the pursuit necessarily differs altogether from the usual stamp of African hunting, and involves no inconsiderable acquaintance with the subtleties of woodcraft. We have here no dashing among countless herds, no helter-skelter riding by the side of a closely-packed phalanx; yet have we a quarry well worth the hardest day’s fag on foot to triumph over. Shunning both the open plain and the society of the multitude, the crafty fellow never ventures from his almost inaccessible fastness, unless during the morning and evening; and even then must he be sought au pied amid the dark upland dells which usually form his solitary abode. With all his wits about him, the lordly bull, active and powerful, may now and then be detected browsing at grey dawn upon some rugged hill summit, or ranging some grassy slope, either alone, or escorted by a small troop of skittish dames, all seeming alike his sentinels; but taking the note of alarm from the slightest noise, he stamps his brave foot upon the ground, tosses his spiral frontlet to the blue sky, and once fairly in motion, never stops to look behind until he has gained the threshold of his sanctuary. There, in some deep chasm which the sunbeam rarely penetrates, among tangled ravines, and hollows densely clothed with trees and brushwood, he lazily reclines during the solar heat, beside some fern-clad stone, and leisurely turns the cud until the cool breezes of eventide once more invite him from his snug retreat.”

Amongst modern authorities on the Great Game-mammals of South Africa, we may select passages from the writings of Mr. Kirby and Mr. J. Millais as giving us good ideas of the present localities of the Kudu and its usual habits. In his already-mentioned ‘Breath from the Veldt,’ Mr. Millais writes as follows:—

“Though the species is gone from the countries south of the Transvaal, there is still a very fair number in the northern forests of that country, and these are not confined to ‘a few troops which still linger,’ as most books on the subject would give us to understand. The fact is, very little hunting goes on in these countries, owing to absence of water and thickness of the bush; the amount of game still to be found there cannot therefore be very much less than in the greater part of Mashonaland, which is very much hunted. I think the following speaks for itself. Four hunters whom I trekked up with each killed on an average ten Koodoos in three months, besides a lot of Pallah and Blue Wildebeests; and this too, in every instance, close to the main road in the Transvaal. If then they could do this, there must surely be a very fair quantity of game in the hundreds of untrodden miles in the south-west and east of the several drifts of the Limpopo. In Mashonaland the Koodoo is probably only reduced in numbers near the transport roads, while it is still plentiful in the neighbourhood of all the rivers and pans of that country where the bush is suitable to its habits.”

In his well-known volume on the ‘Haunts of Wild Game,’ Mr. F. V. Kirby introduces us to the habits of the present species in the following terms:—

“Koodoo frequent rocky bush-covered hills—the rougher and more apparently inaccessible they are the better they like them; but in the Low Country they are equally at home in the heavy belts of bush which line the rivers and water-courses. As a rule, in the latter district they are fairly easy to run into on horseback, although individual bulls and the cows will display great speed and endurance; but in the hill country it requires much patience and care to circumvent an old bull successfully. Unfortunately for themselves, Koodoo are of a most curious disposition, and seldom run far without standing and looking back at their pursuer. Their leaping powers are marvellous, and I have seen them clear obstacles 8 feet in height with apparent ease. Their sense of hearing is very acute—one needs only to look at the large, rounded, mobile ears to be satisfied on that point; and I believe they trust more to that sense for their safety than to any other. Though almost invariably found in the near neighbourhood of water, I fancy they can go for a long time without drinking, judging by the extensive dry areas in which I have found them.”

Mr. W. L. Sclater, in his new volume on the Mammals of South Africa, states that within the limits of his work (that is Africa south of the Zambesi and Cunene Rivers) the Kudu is still probably the most abundant and widespread of the larger Antelopes. Within the Cape Colony, Mr. Sclater tells us, the Kudu is yet to be met with in the southern districts, from the Riversdale and Prince Albert divisions, eastwards to Albany and Fort Beaufort. It is stated to be even abundant in the bush-country along the Koonap and Great Fish Rivers. In the northern parts of the Colony it is also fairly common in parts of Griqualand West and Prieska. In German South-west Africa, Bechuanaland, Rhodesia, the northern and eastern parts of the Transvaal, the Portuguese territories, and in Zululand it is also fairly plentiful in suitable localities. In the South-African Museum at Capetown there are mounted specimens of a male Kudu from near Barberton in the Transvaal, and of a female from Koonap in the Albany division of the Cape Colony.

But the Kudu, as we shall see, ranges far beyond the limits of Mr. Sclater’s South Africa, and we will now proceed to trace its distribution throughout Eastern Africa into the northern territories of Abyssinia and the Egyptian Soudan.

In Nyasaland, Mr. Crawshay tells us, the Kudu is to be met with practically all over the Protectorate, especially in the rugged wooded highlands away from the haunts of men. In the Portuguese provinces on the coast, according to Peters, it appears to be likewise generally distributed. Proceeding to German East Africa, we find it also widely diffused there, extending westwards up to Lake Tanganyika, although, as Herr Matschie tells us, it is “nowhere common.” In British East Africa, Mr. F. J. Jackson informs us, the Kudu is “a rare beast and only found in certain places.” There are always “a few,” he says, “in the Teita country west of Ndara and Kisigao, and on the banks of the Tsavo River, down which it ranges from the head-waters to the Sabaki, and then north up the Athi. All these districts are more or less undulating, very rough, dry and stony, and covered with thick bush.” Further north, Graf Teleki shot two Greater Kudus a few miles to the south of Lake Barengo, and Dr. Donaldson Smith, in the course of his travels, saw one at El Madu in about 4° N. lat. Mr. Arthur H. Neumann met with the Greater Koodoo near Lake Rudolf, as related in his ‘Elephant-hunting,’ but considers it very uncommon in the districts which he traversed. Passing northwards to Somaliland, we find the Kudu more abundant on the higher grounds. Capt. Swayne informs us that it inhabits the top of Wagar Mountain and the Golis Range, which rise to about 6800 feet.

Lieut.-Col. H. D. Olivier, R.E., F.Z.S., who has recently returned from a hunting excursion in Northern Somaliland, has favoured us with the following notes:—

“I first came across the Greater Koodoo in the Golis Range, and I also found it to the west of Hargeisa and near Milmil, as far south as lat. 8°. The first locality, however, was the only one where I pursued it, and it was there more abundant than in the two last-mentioned places. The Golis Range consists of a series of high bluffs under which lies a sort of undercliff forming a lower plateau. This is grown over with gigantic Euphorbias and dense brushwood, interspersed with huge boulders which have fallen from the cliffs above. The Koodoo apparently lie up in very thick patches of such jungle, at least I always found this the case, and the first intimation of their presence was invariably a crash as the quarry dashed off, generally out of sight. Their habit, however, of stopping after a hundred yards or so, to examine the cause of their alarm, is often fatal to them. They seem to lie pretty close, and on one occasion I walked all round one without discovering it, which we did eventually by finding its tracks at the end of our circuit and following them up. The Koodoo browse on the young shoots, and I have also found them eating the smaller kinds of Euphorbias.