226 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



respects, and in a tail-on-end chase the hartebeest 

 can show its heels to the best and stoutest horse ever 

 saddled in the hunting veldt — a feat that not all the 

 larger African antelopes are capable of. 



Chiefly owing to these protective characteristics, 

 the hartebeest has, up to the present time, escaped 

 much of the dreadful slaughter which has over- 

 taken so many species of the South African fauna ; 

 so that, even to this hour, it is to be found in con- 

 siderable plenty in the dry plateaux-lands beyond 

 the Orange River. 



Throughout the more desert portions of Bechuana- 

 land, in the Kalahari, and about the great plains 

 and salt-pans of the Ngamiland region, the harte- 

 beest is still one of the commonest of game animals. 

 In shape it is, what a racing man would contempt- 

 uously call a "three-cornered brute," and its 

 curiously drooping quarters, high withers, elongated, 

 old-fashioned-looking head, black face, singular 

 horns, and brilliant bay colouring, render it easily 

 distinguishable even upon a first encounter. 



The Bechuanas and Bakalahari are exceedingly 

 fond of a cloak made from the bright skin of this 

 antelope ; and in the remoter parts, where the white 

 man's clothing has not yet penetrated, this hand- 

 some hartebeest cloak, with the bushy black tail 

 pendent just at the back of the neck of the wearer, 

 is quite the typical garment of the fashionable 



