304 NATURE AND SPORT IN SOUTH AFRICA 



fairly abundant on the karroos, and especially upon 

 the north-west plains near the Orange River. Some 

 of the smaller antelopes, such as the rhebok, bush- 

 bok, steinbok, duyker, klipspringer, oribi, and blaauw- 

 bok, still remain here and there in fair numbers. 

 The animals here enumerated form the poor remnant 

 of the once innumerable Cape fauna; and, but for 

 the timely measures of protection passed by the 

 Cape Government, and the private exertions of some 

 of the colonists, most of these animals would by this 

 time assuredly have disappeared from the country 

 south of the Orange River. In Natal very much 

 the same state of things prevails, and beyond Natal 

 in Zululand, Amatongaland, and Swaziland, the big 

 game has, except in one or two heavily-jungled 

 localities, practically vanished. 



In 1890-91 I travelled through the w^hole of 

 Bechuanaland, part of the Transvaal, much of the 

 Kalahari and Ngamiland. Here I found the con- 

 ditions of the great game even more deplorable in 

 many ways than in Cape Colony. 



Guns are now plentiful in every part of the 

 interior, and native gunners — next to the Boer skin 

 hunters, the most reckless of all destroyers of animal 

 life — are incessantly at work. Nearly the whole of 

 British Bechuanaland and the Protectorate, as far as 

 Khama's country, has now been denuded of heavy 

 game. Here and there in the former territory a 



