In The Evening I Went Out Stalking In The Desert, And Returned
With Five Fine Buck Gazelles.
These beautiful creatures so
exactly resemble the colour of the sandy deserts which they
inhabit, that they are most difficult to distinguish, and their
extreme shyness renders stalking upon foot very uncertain.
I
accordingly employed an Arab to lead a camel, under cover of
which I could generally manage to approach within a hundred
yards. A buck gazelle weighs from sixty to seventy pounds, and is
the perfection of muscular development. No person who has seen
the gazelles in confinement in a temperate climate can form an
idea of the beauty of the animal in its native desert. Born in
the scorching sun, nursed on the burning sand of the treeless and
shadowless wilderness, the gazelle is among the antelope tribe as
the Arab horse is among its brethren, the high-bred and
superlative beauty of the race. The skin is as sleek as satin, of
a colour difficult to describe, as it varies between the lightest
mauve and yellowish brown; the belly is snow-white; the legs,
from the knee downwards, are also white, and are as fine as
though carved from ivory; the hoof is beautifully shaped, and
tapers to a sharp point; the head of the buck is ornamented by
gracefully-curved annulated horns, perfectly black, and generally
from nine to twelve inches long in the bend; the eye is the
well-known perfection--the full, large, soft, and jet-black eye
of the gazelle.
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