THE DECADENCE OF GEEAT GAME 287 



may know to this hour as you journey through 

 Cape Colony how and where the great game roved. 

 Day after day as you travel you pass places bearing 

 the names of the gallant game pursued and slain in 

 such plenty by the old-time Boers. Elandsberg, 

 Rhenoster (rhinoceros) Kop, Oliphant's (elephant's) 

 River, Quagga Fontein, Gemsbok Laagte, Leeuw 

 (lion) Spruit; these and a host of similar designa- 

 tions bestowed by the Dutch in every nook and 

 corner of the land, demonstrate the wonderful abund- 

 ance of the game in those glorious days. The very 

 names are enough to rouse the imagination and stir 

 the blood of the passing Englishman. 



The Boers, very gradually and very slowly, drove 

 the game before them. The early settlers were 

 quite certainly not all natural-born hunters; yet 

 they had stout hearts and strong arms, and with 

 their primitive firearms they managed somehow, 

 with infinite trouble and difficulty, to push back the 

 game. Some of them, the farmers, and the bolder 

 and wilder spirits, developed into elephant hunters, 

 and brought 'many a tusk of ivory into the Cape 

 market. These people clad themselves mainly with 

 the skins of antelopes, dressed to a suitable texture. 

 They must have been hardy souls ; what with lions, 

 elephants, rhinoceroses, buffaloes, and other dangerous 

 game, and the occasional attacks of Bushmen with 

 poisoned arrows, these early frontiersmen must have 



