THE DECADENCE OF GREAT GAME 305 



few troops of hartebeest still eke out a shuddering 

 existence. But all tlie remainder of that wonderful 

 collection of animal life depicted by Cornwallis 

 Harris has vanished. The plains were tenantless, 

 save for the small buck (steinbok and duyker). On 

 the Maritsani river, where Harris had found himself 

 involved in bewildering crowds of every kind of rare 

 game, only a troop or two of hartebeest were left. 

 On the Molopo — Gordon Cumming's " darling little 

 Molopo " — where that great hunter, clad in his High- 

 land kilt, and with bare arms and legs and vast red 

 beard, had pursued the lion, buffalo, and other game, 

 there remained but a reed-buck or two. English 

 sportsmen at Mafeking and Vryburg were now hunt- 

 ing with foxhounds the jackal and the duyker, where 

 their predecessors had not long before pursued all 

 kinds of noble beasts of chase, from the giraffe 

 downwards. 



To the westward, on entering the South Kalahari, 

 I found gemsbok, hartebeest, koodoo, wildebeest, 

 and a lion or two still maintaining a precarious 

 sanctuary. Even here, however, the assaults of 

 native hunters cannot be long resisted. The spring- 

 bok and blesbok had clean been swept away from 

 South Bechuanaland, leaving the great grass plains 

 far more devoid of life even than in the Cape Colony.^ 



^ I am delighted to hear, just as this goes to press, that 

 blesbok are showing in British Bechuanaland again, in the 



