keepers at full gallop, followed by many others. I gave my horse his head and a touch of the whip; in a few minutes he carried me to the front, and I was riding neck-and-neck with one of the keepers. When we were about two hundred yards off the bearcoot struck his prey. The deer gave a bound forward and fell. The bearcoot had struck one talon into his neck, the other into his back, and with his beak was tearing out the animal's liver. The Kirghis sprang from his horse, slipped the hood over the eagle's head and the shackles upon his legs, and removed him from his prey without difficulty. No dogs are taken out when hunting with the eagle; they would be destroyed to a certainty. Foxes, wild goats, and antelopes are taken in considerable number. The bearcoot is unerring in his flight; unless the animal can escape into holes in the rocks, as the fox does sometimes, death is his certain doom."

In Central Asia a large stag called the Maral is found in all the mountain regions. He affords noble sport for the hunters, and his horns are highly valued; but it demands, says Mr. Atkinson, "a fearless hunter to follow him into his haunts among the precipices, glaciers, and snowy peaks of this region. They are seldom found in herds,

though groups of ten or twelve are sometimes seen standing on the brink of a precipice 1500 to 2000 feet in height, quite inaccessible to man. On one occasion I saw a group of seven standing on the top of a mass of rock rising up like a gigantic tower to the height of 700 or 800 feet, three of its sides being perpendicular, and the fourth formed by a narrow ridge of rocks running up from the top of a great precipice at an angle of 60 degrees."

"The Cossacks," remarks Mr. Atkinson, "display a finer sense of honor in their hunting than many highly-civilized Europeans." Two Cossacks were out hunting the maral for two objects, food and antlers. They had followed the game far up into the Alatau mountains, and had

started a magnificent animal whose antlers were worth alone 120 rubles (nearly 100 dollars), a prize well worth securing. They hunted him from valley to valley till at last he retreated to a high craggy region. Toward evening they had driven him along a narrow gorge to the very brink of a perpendicular precipice, which closed its farther end. In front of this precipice, something below its level, rose an isolated basaltic rock, with an intervening chasm thirty-three feet wide. As the maral approached the brink of the precipice, two huge bears sprang upon his heels, from an ambush between him and his human hunters. With a desperate leap the stag bounded clear over the chasm, and alighted, unharmed, on the top of the slender basaltic pillar. One of the bears leaped after him; but, miscalculating the distance, fell sheer down the chasm—a depth of 400 feet—and was crushed by the fall. The other bear stopped short on the brink, growling with rage. A shot from the rifle of one of the Cossacks sent him tumbling over to join his companion. The maral stood on his narrow perch, gazing at the hunters, as though challenging their admiration for his gallant leap. He was within easy shot. His horns alone were worth five times the yearly pay of one of the Cossacks. Poor and rude as they were, they had not the heart to fire at the noble beast. They looked at him for a few moments, carefully noted the peculiar marks that distinguished him; then turned away, and through the growing darkness retraced their way to their camp, and related to their comrades the story of the gallant stag, describing him so minutely that he might be recognized. The next day they returned to the spot. The two bears were found dead at the foot of the precipice; the maral had again leaped the chasm, alighting upon a large ledge, and had escaped. Many a time afterward was he seen by the hunters; but not a man of them would draw trigger upon him; and he long remained, unharmed, the king of his native wilds.

THIS noble antelope, the largest of his tribe, is met with in most parts of Africa, but more especially on the borders of the Great Kalahari Desert. The full-grown male measures six feet high at the shoulder, and is about twelve feet in length. Its horns are about two feet long, with a ridge ascending in a spiral direction about half-way up, the spiral making two perfect turns when the male is full grown. Its tail is between two and three feet long, and it has a dewlap hanging to its knees. Its general color is ashen-grey, and in bulk it equals an adult ox; indeed, a troop of eland bulls in full condition is likened by an experienced African hunter to "a herd of stall-fed oxen.' The eland cow has no dewlap, she is altogether more graceful and slenderly built than her mate, and her horns are slighter, and without the ridge.

Despite the rapid strides which civilization has made among us, there is one of our institutions that a Bechuana, wild from the verge of the Great Kalahari, can afford to laugh to scorn-our roast beef. Eland flesh, so say travelers all, is more delicious than that of any other animal running on four legs; and no traveler, whose experience has extended beyond the quadrupedal, ever ventured to dispute the eland's supremacy. The animal is fit for dressing the moment

it is killed; its lean is sweet-scented, tender, and mellow, and its fat delicious. Moreover, in such splendid condition is the eland generally found, that the Bechuanas could, if they pleased, hold a "cattle show," compared with which the Baker Street Bazar would seem a mere skin market. "At the end of a severe chase," writes Mr. Gordon Cumming, "I have repeatedly seen an eland drop down dead, owing to his plethoric habit."

It roams the desert plains in troops of from ten to a hundred strong, and is, "like the gemsbok, independent of water." The eland has less speed than any other variety of antelope, and falls an easy prey to the stealthy savage "stalker," with his assagai or poisoned arrows. On account of this lack of speed, the eland suffers much more than any other antelope from the attacks of that terrible fellow the "wilde honden," as he is called by the Boers, in other words, the gaunt, mangy, ever-hungering wild dog. This animal would seem to be a connecting link between the wolf and the hyena, combining the stealth and cunning of the latter, with the blood-thirstiness, the untiring, long-strided, and leisurely gallop, and the disposition to act in concert evinced by the former. The females bring forth their whelps in holes and underground burrows. They have three different cries, each being used on special occasions. "One of these cries is a sharp angry bark, usually uttered when they behold an object they can not exactly make out; another resembles a number of monkeys chattering together, or men conversing, while their teeth are clashing with cold. This cry is emitted at night, when large numbers of them are together, and they are excited by any particular occurrence, such as hearing the voice of the domestic dog. The third cry, and that most commonly used among them, is a sort of rallying note to bring the various members of the pack together." They hunt in packs, fifty or sixty strong, the leading hounds when fatigued falling to the rear, when others, who have been "saving their wind," take their place, and the entire troop, inspired anew, utter their appalling yell and lengthen their stride. Let the object of pursuit be what it may, eland, or gnoo, or gemsbok, he will surely succumb to the dogged perseverance of the "wilde honden," and being once brought to bay the business is soon settled. Now you have the panting and bedraggled eland, helplessly contending against the death that awaits him in each of the fifty pair of bloody jaws by which he is encircled, and within ten minutes not a trace of eland is in sight, not a scrap of flesh, nor a strip of skin, not a smear of blood upon the ground even-nothing but a reclining posse of blinking,