AMONGST THE BIG GAME.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXVI, Issue 49, 30 November 1909, Page 6

AMONGST THE BIG GAME.

kilt ROOSEVELT DESCRIBES THE

GIGANTIC ZOO

HERD OF ZEBRA ON THE LINE

Mr Roosevelt gives in detail in the current number of 'Scribner's Magazine' the story of the early part of his adventures in the Alrican game country, which ho compares to a vast Zoological garden. This is how he describes it:—

"At one time we passed^a herd of a dozen or so ol great giralles, cows ajid calves, cantering along through ■ tho open woods a couple of hundred yards to the right of the train. Again, still closer, lour water-buck cows, their big ears thrown forward, stared at us without moving until wo had passed. Hartebeests were everywhere; one herd *vas on the' track, and when the engine whistled they bucked ami sprang with ungainly agility and galloped clear of the danger. 'A long-tailed straw-colored monkey ran from one tree to another. Lingo black Ostriches appeared irom time to time. A herd of zebra clattered across a cutting of the lino not a hundred yairds ahead of the train; the whistle hurried their progress, but only for a moment, and as we passed they were already turning round to gaze. _ ''Tho protection given tlieso wild creatures is genuine, not nominal; they aro presoneu, not lor the pleasure oi the lew, but for the good of all who choose to sec this strange and attractive spectacle; and from this nursery and breeding-ground the overflow keeps up the stock oi game in the adjacent land, to the benefit of the settler to whom the game gives fresh meat, and Im tho benefit of the whole country because of the attraction it furnishes to all who desire to visit a veritable happy hunting ground. "The first afternoon we did not fwc many wild animals, but birds abounded. A black-and-white hornbill, feeding on the track, rose so lato that we nearly caught it with our hands; guinea-fowl and lrancolin, and occasionally bustard, rose near by ; brilliant rollers, sun-birds, he n -eatcr, and '.vf-aver-birds ilew beside us or "-"it unmoved among the trees as the train parsed. In the dusk we nearly ran over a hyena; a year or two previously tho train actually diu run over a lioness one night, and the conductor brought in her head in triumph. In fact, there have been continually mishaps such as could only happen to a railroad in the Pleistocene i"