126 ANTELOPES 



River Colony, the southern Transvaal, and British Bechuanaland. In 

 the last-named state they were, however, still to be found in a purely 

 wild condition at least up to the year 1882. 



On the protected farms blesbok are now usually shot with the aid 

 of a stalking-horse ; and even in the days of their abundance they 

 were difficult game to approach. 



Writing in 1837 of the blesbok on the Vet river, a tributary of 

 the Vaal, in the Orange River Colony, Sir Cornwallis Harris observes : 

 " We passed over a low tract about eight miles in extent, strongly 

 impregnated with salt, and abounding (it was then the wet season) in 

 lakes and pools. The number of wild animals congregated on this 

 swampy flat almost realised fable, the roads made by their incessant 

 tramp resembling so many well-travelled highways. At every step 

 incredible herds of bontebucks,^ blesbucks, and springbucks, with 

 troops of gnus and squadrons of the common or stripeless quagga, 

 were performing their complicated evolutions ; and not unfrequently 

 a knot of ostriches, decked in their white plumes, played the part of 

 general officer and staff with such propriety as still further to remind 

 the spectator of a cavalry review." 



Gordon Cumming, in 1848, describes the same country as follows : 

 " When we came to the Vet river, I beheld with astonishment and 

 delight decidedly one of the most wonderful displays which I had 

 witnessed during my varied sporting career in southern Africa. On 

 my right and left the plain exhibited one purple mass of graceful 

 blesboks, which extended without a break as far as my eyes could 

 strain : the depth of their vast legions covered a breadth of about six 

 hundred yards." And again the same traveller, writing of blesbok, 

 observes that " throughout the greater portion of the year they are 

 very wary and difficult of approach, but more especially when the 

 does have young ones ; at that season, when a herd is disturbed, and 

 takes away up the wind, every other herd in view follows it, and the 

 alarm extending for miles and miles down the wind, to endless herds 

 beyond the vision of the hunter, a continued stream of blesboks may 

 often be seen scouring up-wind for upwards of an hour, and covering 

 the landscape as far as the eye can see." 



These narratives, incredible as they may seem, are fully supported 

 by the testimony of old residents in the Orange River Colony and 

 the Transvaal, which absolutely bears out the reports of Cornwallis 

 Harris and Gordon Cumming. These men believed it impossible 

 that the hosts of antelopes could ever be exterminated ; nevertheless, 



^ Here blesbok are confused with bontebok, which do not exist in this region. 



