296 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



day's journey over a succession of flats covered with 

 them as far as I could see, and as thick as sheep 

 in a fold." I have myself heard much the same 

 accounts from old farmers, English and Dutch, of the 

 Cape Colony. 



In these astonishing migrations, the springboks, 

 travelling from the imm.ense and arid deserts in the 

 north-west of the colony, devoured every blade and 

 leaf of vegetation before them. The frontier Boers 

 often lost their entire crops, and even their flocks 

 and herds were sometimes swept away before the 

 myriads of antelopes and lost. It is on record that 

 a lion has been seen encompassed by a mass of 

 trekking springboks quite unable to escape, a pretty 

 situation for the king of beasts truly ! 



It is a pleasure to record that the springbok, one 

 of the most elegant and graceful of all the antelopes, 

 still survives in some plenty in Cape Colony. I found 

 it some years since on the Great Karroo in large 

 numbers. My friend Mr. J. G. Millais had some excel- 

 lent sport among springboks in the neighbourhood of 

 Beaufort West two or three years back, and brought 

 home some most interesting studies of these charming 

 antelopes. In Bushmanland, to the north-west of 

 the Colony, the " trek-bokken," on a greatly reduced 

 scale, still continues, and the wandering Trek Boers 

 in that region shoot large numbers of this game. 

 As the Cape Colony becomes slowly settled up. 



