302 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



this excellent character in the South African hinter- 

 land — for the attributes of chivalrous courage, 

 honesty, and fair dealing — again, I repeat, we have 

 to thank mainly the race of English hunters. If 

 they destroyed the game, they built up for their 

 successors a magnificent reputation. 



I have said that for many years I have taken a 

 deep interest in the history of the game of South 

 Africa. Some years since, in wandering through 

 Cape Colony, I took a good deal of trouble to get 

 at the distribution and numbers of the fauna still 

 remaining. I found, of course, that terrible devasta- 

 tion had taken place. Most of the nobler beasts 

 had vanished. The crowds of game decorating the 

 veldt in Gordon Cumming's time were gone, or 

 nearly gone. The quagga had become quite extinct; 

 the eland and the blesbok had disappeared ; the lion 

 and the last rhinoceros had given up the ghost in 

 the fifties ; the gemsbok and hartebeest only found 

 shelter in scant numbers in the desert fringing the 

 Orange Eiver. Almost the last hippopotamus of 

 the Cape rivers was killed in 1874. A few of these 

 behemoths are, however, still to be found in the 

 lower waters of the Orange. The elephant and the 

 buffalo, thanks to timely measures of the Cape 

 Government in years gone by, had, strangely enough, 

 been preserved from extinction. It is refreshing to 

 be able to record that troops of these animals still 



