THE WHITE RHINOCEROS I 27 



through the tangled vegetation on the banks, 

 making wide lines in their repeated passage. The 

 noble family of antelopes exhibited in bewildering 

 profusion its splendid series of animal types — 

 eland and kudu, gemsbok and hartebeest, spring- 

 bok and duiker : the mountain ranges were 

 ornamented by the savage beauty of the Cape 

 zebra, and by the chamois-like grace of the little 

 klipspringer. In the forest land browsed troops 

 of stately giraffes, whose variegated hides were 

 scarcely distinguishable from the mottled trunks 

 amongst which they wandered ; whilst the imposing 

 presence of great herds of elephants, their huge 

 ivory tusks gleaming in the hot sunshine, and their 

 great ears flapping to and fro, completed a picture 

 of wild life which in recent times has had no rival, 

 either on the North American prairies, once teeming 

 with countless bison, or on the South American 

 pampas, the home of jaguar and puma, of tapir 

 and peccary, of huanaco and rhea. Not only so, 

 but even if one could bring to life that marvellous 

 assemblage of antediluvian animals which the 

 genius of Cuvier and Buckland, of Marsh and 

 Cope has reconstructed from the fossilized relics of 

 bygone ages, till one saw again the long-extinct 

 pterodactyl sailing through the groves of ptero- 

 phyllum on its parachute-like membranes, or beheld 

 the terrible sabre-toothed tiger (machairodus) steal- 

 ing like a shadow after the three-toed horses on the 



