2i6 ANTELOPES 



" During the first day's journey along the southern bank of the 

 Chobi I recorded in my journal that from time to time herds of puku 

 antelopes, disturbed by our approach while feeding close along the 

 water's edge, eyed us curiously and then bounded off into the jungle ; 

 and a few days later I wrote in regard to some open stretches of level 

 alluvial ground lying between the bank of the river and the forest-clad 

 ridges to the south, that the number of puku on these flats surprised 

 me. Sometimes troops of more than fifty were to be seen together, 

 males and females mixed, or again small herds of ten or fifteen old rams. 



" In 1877 I visited the Chobi a second time, and hunted for several 

 months along its southern bank ; but although this was only three 

 years after my first visit when I had found puku so numerous, these 

 antelopes had become excessively scarce, and, in fact, had almost 

 ceased to exist. The extermination of the puku in this part of Africa 

 was due to a political convulsion among the Barotsi tribe on the upper 

 Zambesi, as, during the year 1876, shortly after the assassination of 

 the chief, Sipopo, large numbers of natives fled from their homes on 

 the Zambesi, crossed the sv/amps of the Chobi, and camped along the 

 southern bank of that river, on the puku ground. As the puku were 

 confined to a narrow strip of ground between the bank of the river and 

 the forest-covered sand-ridges, the greater number was soon shot or 

 caught in pitfalls. During this period of persecution no puku moved 

 either farther westwards along the Chobi, or eastwards along the 

 Zambesi towards the Victoria Falls, for though 1 found a few still 

 surviving in their old haunts in 1877, there were none either to the 

 east or the west of the small tract of country in which they had been 

 so common in 1874. Both the puku and the lechwi were discovered 

 by Dr. Livingstone, the latter on the Botletli river in 1849, ^"^ the 

 former apparently on the upper Zambesi above Libonta in November 

 1853. When Livingstone and Oswell visited Linyanti in 1851 they 

 crossed the Chobi farther west than the range of the puku ; but it is 

 curious that they did not notice any of these antelopes when they 

 visited Sesheke, on the Zambesi, in 185 1, as puku must have been 

 numerous in that neighbourhood. Again, in 1853, when Livingstone 

 was journeying up the Zambesi from its junction with the Chobi to 

 the falls of Gonyi, he must certainly have seen many herds of puku, 

 although he does not seem to have noticed them, and makes no 

 reference to the species in the narrative of his travels until after 

 passing Libonta, in northern Barotsiland. A plate in Missionary 

 Travels, lettered ' New African antelopes discovered by Oswell, 

 Murray, and Livingstone,' would indeed lead one to suppose that 



