96 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



west one may find vast tracts of country as silent 

 and as purely desert almost as the Kalahari itself. 

 In the forests and jungles of the southern coast 

 region wild elephants and buffaloes still wander in 

 troops protected by Government ; while in the east 

 and south-east there lie immense stretches of bush- 

 veldt and leagues of mountain interior, as little 

 disturbed by the foot of man as the most ardent 

 lover of pure nature can desire. 



These mountain interiors of the Cape Colony offer 

 some of the wildest and sublimest scenery to be 

 found in all Africa. Here, upon inaccessible cliffs 

 and rugged hills, still finds shelter that rare beast, 

 the true or mountain zebra, an animal now becoming 

 very scarce. This quadruped {Egtius zebra) gallops 

 the mountain, and climbs from steep to steep with 

 as much ease as his cousin, Burchell's zebra, speeds 

 across the grass plains of the interior ; and seen, as 

 he is only to be seen, in the wildest and remotest 

 mountain solitudes of the Cape, there are few more 

 interesting studies for the naturalist. The koodoo, 

 that prince of antelopes, still lingers in the bush- 

 veldt of the Eastern Province. The rheboks, grey 

 and red, and the klipspringer, true mountaineers 

 all; the bushbuck, the duyker, the steinbok, the 

 grysbuck, the dainty oribi, and the tiny blaauwbok 

 are all still to be found. And upon the wide Karroo 

 plains, once thronged with a variety of great game, 



