268 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



recent times, had fallen to the rifles of comparatively 

 few. Gordon Gumming, Baldwin, and others, indeed, 

 pursued and slew it, but the extreme distance of 

 its haunts from civilization, and the difficult and 

 unexplored country in which it wandered, long 

 prevented many sportsmen from procuring speci- 

 mens. Mr. Selous has probably shot more of these 

 antelopes than any other person. But Selous pene- 

 trated further afield even than Harris, and in 

 Mashonaland he discovered at length the true 

 home and abiding-place of the sable antelope. 

 Here he found them in large troops of over fifty. 

 Dutch hunters too have for years been shooting 

 large numbers of Zwart-wit-pens in the country 

 north-east of the Transvaal, especially about the 

 Sabi river. There are still a few sable antelopes 

 to be found in the eastern part of Khama's country 

 bordering upon Matabeleland. I never found their 

 spoor in the Lake river country (Ngamiland), nor 

 do I think any are to be found in that region. But 

 further north, in the broken, rocky country along 

 the Zambesi, and especially towards the Victoria 

 Falls, and about the Ghobe river, they are to be 

 found in moderate numbers. 



Never very abundant in the Transvaal, even in 

 Harris's time, at the present day there is not a 

 single specimen, I suppose, anywhere to be found 

 in any part of that territory. In the wild country 



