134 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



The long black tails are meanwhile whirled briskly 

 to and fro over the back with a loud swishing noise, 

 which can be plainly heard as the rider presses close 

 in the rear of these astounding quadrupeds; and 

 when (as happened once to the writer in the 

 Ngamiland country) a large troop of eighteen or 

 twenty of these immense and unique animals come 

 sailing across the line of vision, the whole procession 

 resembles some dream-like pageant of an era long 

 remote and forgotten in the world's annals. Such a 

 spectacle can now-a-days only be witnessed in the far- 

 distant deserts of remote and savage Africa. At the 

 beginning of this century, and for some years later, 

 giraffes were to be found ranging as far south as the 

 Orange River; to-day one first finds them in the 

 North Kalahari country, and most plentifully in the 

 wild desolate forest region fringing the southern 

 bank of the Botletli river, Ngamiland. 



In this desperately prosaic modern life of ours, the 

 giraffe viewed in the wild state seems, ancient as is 

 its descent, too wonderful, too incongruous a beast to 

 survive much longer in the world's history. And it is 

 a saddening reflection that these marvellous creations 

 of nature, which with their prototypes have roamed the 

 earth for thousands of years, should be now measur- 

 ably approaching a period of extinction. Firearms 

 have much to answer for, and firearms, which have 

 rapidly thinned out the giraffe from Southern Africa 



