THE DECADENCE OF GREAT GAME 803 



range freely in the Knysna Forest, the Acldo Bush, 

 and one or two other densely-jungled localities on 

 the southern borders of Cape Colony. But, although 

 these animals still roam the old Colony within sight 

 of the Indian Ocean, it is a melancholy fact that you 

 may now travel for a thousand miles and more up- 

 country without finding a single specimen. The 

 koodoo, one of the most magnificent of all the ante- 

 lopes, thanks to the efforts of a few English farmers 

 in the eastern province, still exists in the colony. 

 The leopard defies extermination, so far, and haunts 

 the Cape mountains in nearly every district. The 

 mountain zebra (Fqtms zebra) lingers on a few ranges 

 of the colony, along the Drakensberg, and as far east 

 as the Lebombo Mountains in Swaziland. I have 

 watched with the keenest delight a troop preserved 

 on the farms of friends of mine in the eastern 

 province, no great way from Port Elizabeth, where 

 they were, of course, never shot at. The curious 

 bontebok (Alcelaphtcs pygargics), to be numbered of 

 old in the Orange Free State and Cape Colony by 

 hundreds of thousands, is, as I have shown, at the 

 present moment represented by one single troop, 

 long preserved on the farm of a Dutch gentleman, 

 Mr. Van der Byl, near Cape Agulhas. These are 

 the last of their race. The white-tailed gnu is 

 almost as near extinction, although forty years ago 

 inordinately plentiful. The fecund springbok is still 



