278 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



have so long warded off the extinction of this 

 interesting antelope. 



As with so many other of the South African fauna, 

 the habitat of the bontebok was to the north singu- 

 larly and capriciously restricted. Its range never 

 seems, indeed, to have extended beyond the Vaal river. 

 Cornwallis Harris, on his journey south from the 

 interior, speaks of arriving suddenly in the country 

 frequented by this antelope. " The number of wild 

 animals congregrated," he says, " almost realized 

 fable, the road made by their incessant tramp resem- 

 bling so many well-travelled highways. At every 

 step incredible herds of bontebok, blesbok, and 

 springbok, with troops of gnus and squadrons of 

 the common or stripeless quagga, were performing 

 their complicated evolutions." This was in 1837. 

 Alas, how changed are now the bare plains of the 

 Orano^e Free State ! An old hunter once described 

 to the present writer the singular appearance of a 

 troop of bontebok in motion. Like the blesbok, 

 they always ran up-wind with their heads carried 

 very low down. Their dense battalions presented the 

 appearance of a vast mass of heaving purplish-brown, 

 flecked here and there with white. The Zoological 

 Society seems only once to have exhibited specimens 

 of these antelopes — a pair of females, acquired as far 

 back as 1871. The bontebok will probably never 

 again be seen alive in Europe. 



