THE VANISHING ELAND 215 



penetrate to the innermost recesses of the Kalahari, 

 and, wandering from one pool of rain-water to 

 another, deal destruction among the game, and 

 especially among giraffes and elands. That elands 

 are still plentiful in these regions of the Kalahari 

 I can personally testify, having found them in 

 numbers, and procured specimens in two or three 

 days' hunting from the desert road between Khama's 

 and the Botletii river (between Inkouane and 

 Kanne) within recent years. Coming down country^ 

 too, I saw at Sechele's town — Molepolole — numbers 

 of horns and heads of freshly slain elands, some of 

 them magnificent examples, which had been recently 

 shot by Bakwena hunters. But that, even in the 

 North Kalahari, these and other game can long 

 resist the incessant war of extermination waged 

 against them, I am much more than doubtful. 



Protection is now given by various laws and 

 proclamations made by the Government of Bechuana- 

 land, and, quite recently, a table of heavy licences 

 has been issued for the purpose of restraining indis- 

 criminate slaughter by European hunters. In these 

 edicts the Kalahari is included. But in these distant 

 territories it is a difficult, almost an impossible, matter 

 to enforce game-laws. Native hunters — a class more 

 wasteful of animal life than even the Boers themselves 

 — can still take the field ; and even if the Bechuana 

 tribes could be restrained from their wasteful methods 



