288 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



had a keen struggle for existence. Unthinking men 

 run down the Boer of South Africa. Not every 

 European race, I take it, could have conquered the 

 natural difficulties of a country as did these people, 

 and have emerged so little spoiled by two hundred 

 and fifty years of such an existence. 



It is a sad reflection that the descendants of these 

 pioneers became at a later period mere mercenary 

 skin hunters, slaying the game for the paltry value 

 of the hides, and quickly denuding vast territories of 

 almost every head of the larger mammalia. 



In 1796, when the British first took possession 

 of the Cape, the Colonial limits of the Dutch were 

 still very restricted. Mr. Barrow, whom I have 

 previously quoted, undertook, by the direction of 

 the Governor, a complete tour of the country, 

 and in an admirable book of travels gives a 

 very complete picture of those days. Elephants, 

 lions, buffaloes, rhinoceroses, and hippopotami, were 

 still plentiful in the eastern and northern portions 

 of the Colony; the antelopes thronged the plains, 

 apparently as thickly as ever, and the zebra and 

 quagga were abundant. A fine beast, very nearly 

 akin to the great roan antelope, called by the Boers 

 the blaauwbok, and by naturalists the Leuco^pTimus — 

 which seems to have had in the Cape Colony a very 

 restricted habitat, and was only found in the division 

 of Swellendam — had, it is true, just disappeared ; and 



