THE TRUE QUAGGA 1 77 



The history of the decline and fall of the 

 quagga is as follows : 



Thunberg in 1773 met with it on the flats 

 adjacent to the Zwartkops River, near the 

 present site of Port Elizabeth. It then enjoyed 

 a practically undiminished range, living out its 

 life as it had previously existed — harmless and 

 unharmed — for centuries. The first sign of 

 the recession of the true quagga may be recog- 

 nised in an observation made by Thomas 

 Pringle in 1820. Pringle was not only an 

 intimate friend of Sir Walter Scott, but was also 

 himself a poet of considerable distinction : with the 

 true regret of an educated man he laments the 

 almost total disappearance of the quaggas and 

 hartebeests from the open pastures of the Albany 

 district, which they had formerly enlivened with 

 their presence. Some twelve years afterwards the 

 Cape farmers, according to Lieutenant Moodie, 

 were employing meal sacks made of quagga skin, 

 this custom persisting till at least fifty years later : 

 Harris also mentions Boer shoes, home-made from 

 the skin covering the hocks of this animal. By 1 836 

 the quagga had become rarer, though still found 

 on the great Karroo Desert and on the outskirts 

 of Cape Colony : in the far interior it yet roamed 

 in immense numbers. The hide-hunting Boers 

 of 1850-70, however, attacked even the remoter 

 herds, whose legions began to diminish year by 



