280 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



king over the plains of Southern Africa, at that time 

 literally darkened by countless herds of many kinds 

 of game, had been told that by the year 1890 nearly 

 all these magnificent creatures would have clean 

 vanished from the scene, he would have laughed the 

 idea to scorn. 



Yet the impossible has happened, and the close 

 of the present century sees North America almost 

 destroyed as a game country; the bison has gone, 

 the wapiti, the moose, the cariboo, and the bear are 

 going fast. Of South Africa, a country more prodi- 

 gally endowed by nature than any other part of the 

 world, the same miserable tale has to be told. The 

 elephant, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, the lion, 

 giraffe, buffalo, zebra, gnu, koodoo, hartebeest, gems- 

 bok, sable and roan antelopes, the blesbok, and a 

 host of other examples — forming a galaxy of the 

 noblest game the world has ever seen — have been 

 swept away from great portions of the immense 

 countries south of the Zambesi. Only in parts of 

 the virgin veldt of Rhodesia, the adjacent territory 

 in South-East Africa, and the most inaccessible 

 deserts of North Bechuanaland and the Kalahari, are 

 there to be found representatives of that astounding 

 fauna which not long since gave unspeakable charm 

 to plain and mountain, karroo and kloof, from the 

 southern shores of the Cape Colony right away to 

 the far Zambesi. And even in those distant and 



