210 NATUKE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



man. His eyes grow bright, his thews stiffen, his 

 frame is altogether more alert. One of the natives 

 now takes up the spoor and leads the way. Botha 

 shoves a cartridge into his rifle, touches his horse 

 with the spur, to hint to him that game is afoot, and 

 follows. Without a word the little procession moves 

 on. The keen wind of daybreak is falling now, the 

 sun grows visibly hotter, already the sweat begins to 

 start from the three men. 



After another half-hour the spoor leads them 

 through thicker bush in the direction of a stony 

 kopje, a litter of bare gigantic rocks, lying there as if 

 thrown idly upon the veldt by some race of Titans. 

 From amid the hollows start up bush, euphorbia, and 

 aloes. 



They are very close upon the game now. The 

 Boer dismounts, hands his horse to the spoorer, and 

 creeps forward over the lower edge of the kopje. 

 From behind a patch of bush he sees at length what 

 he is in search of. Out there upon the open grass 

 plain, stretching before him under the sun in a blind- 

 ing dazzle of pale yellow, is a troop of fourteen Zwart- 

 wit-pens, perhaps the most magnificent of all the 

 South African antelopes — great creatures, as big and 

 heavy as mature red deer. Their glossy, black and 

 rufous coats, and great, curved, scimitar-shaped horns 

 fliash to the sunshine. Some are feeding; some 

 resting ; there, on a piece of open sand, are two roll- 



