THE DECADENCE OF GREAT GAME 285 



It is a melancholy tale, this of the extermination 

 of South African game, which for the last twenty-one 

 years, since I first knew the country, I have followed 

 with the closest interest. In the course of my in- 

 quiries I have had occasion to compare the accounts 

 of the fauna of South Africa, when the Dutch iirst 

 landed there in the seventeenth century, with the 

 fauna of the present day. Perhaps a sketch of the 

 various periods of decadence may be not unprofitable. 



When the early Dutch settlers landed at the Cape 

 in 1652, with their first governor, stout Jan 

 Van Riebeek, they found the country one vast and 

 apparently inexhaustible natural preserve of great 

 game. Down to the very shores of the Atlantic and 

 Indian Ocean there wandered a countless multitude 

 of the noblest and rarest species with which a prodi- 

 gal nature ever blessed the earth. The elephant, 

 rhinoceros, and buffalo roamed everywhere ; the hip- 

 popotamus bathed his unwieldy form in every stream 

 and river; the lion, leopard, and cheetah pursued 

 their prey unchecked ; the eland, koodoo, gnu, harte- 

 beest, and a cloud of other fine antelopes grazed in 

 astonishing plenty. The mountain zebras paced the 

 sierras of the Cape peninsula and every other range 

 of the colony in strong troops ; the handsome quagga 

 everywhere thronged the karroo plains. In every 

 corner of that vast land, upon flat and upland, in 

 deep and lonely kloof, and over boundless plain, there 



