218 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



the strip of Portuguese country eastward, the Kala- 

 hari, and the regions beyond Lake Ngami, are the 

 only portions of South Africa where it may be now 

 found. There is one exception to this statement. 

 Thanks to the exertions of the Natal legislature, a 

 few elands are — or were, till a year or so back — 

 preserved in a rough and difficult part of the 

 Drakensberg, dividing Natal from Basutoland. In 

 Mashonaland and the Portuguese territory ad- 

 jacent, settlers are now beginning to throng ; the 

 elands, a very short time since plentiful in that 

 country, are, as usual, the first to be shot out ; and a 

 few years must inevitably see their disappearance in 

 those regions also — that is, unless the British South 

 Africa Company can succeed in making its game- 

 laws respected, an immensely difficult matter in a 

 vast, thinly-populated country. There will then 

 only remain in Africa south of the Zambesi the less 

 frequented countries to the westward — the North 

 Kalahari, and the deserts thence to the Zambesi, in 

 which the eland may be found. When we remember 

 that in 1837 Cornwallis Harris described this mag- 

 nificent antelope as inhabiting the plains of the 

 interior — that is, the plains beyond the Orange 

 River — "in vast herds," the survey is melancholy 

 enough. 



A curious point in the always singular freaks of 

 the geographical distribution of animals is to be 



