THE BONTEBOK 277 



numbers. The bontebok flourished here in great 

 plenty for many years later, despite the advancing 

 tide of Dutch hunters. Even so lately as 1851, a 

 friend of the writer remembered some seventeen or 

 eighteen still remaining on the Bontebok Flats, 

 north of Queenstown, the last remnant of those 

 illimitable herds that once pied the great Karroo 

 plains south of the Orange River. 



When the emigrant Dutch farmers quitted Cape 

 Colony and crossed the Orange River, they found, in 

 the country now called the Orange Free State, the 

 bontebok pasturing upon the plains in still greater 

 plenty. In company with blesboks, springboks, 

 white-tailed gnu, quagga, and ostriches, they literally 

 darkened the face of the land. Their numbers seemed 

 as inexhaustible as the sands of the seashore; yet 

 between 1840 and 1870 the skin-hunting Boers 

 wrought their downfall. It is believed that not a 

 single bontebok is now to be found in the Orange 

 Free State, or indeed anywhere north of the Orange 

 River. The little band spoken of as still existing 

 near Cape Agulhas, has, thanks to the care of the 

 families of Van Breda and Van der Byl, been pre- 

 served there religiously since 1830. But in-and-in 

 breeding from one stock is seldom successful in the 

 long run, and it may be doubted whether the last 

 remnant of this once so prolific species can long 

 survive the close of this century. All praise to the 

 Dutch gentlemen who in a land of extermination 



