CHAP. III. ELAND. 163 



sequently anxious to return. We had a long and tiring 

 day's walking, and on the way a buffalo was shot, whose 

 ownership was of course disputed, and H. killed a young 

 gnu, — our bag for five days thus being three buffalo, two 

 eland, five sassabi, one zebra, and one gnu, besides what 

 went away mortally wounded, of which to my gun alone 

 there were at least two head. 



More eland are killed from horseback than on foot ; 

 for as it is utterly out of the question to make a practice 

 of running them down, and as they generally inhabit the 

 treeless flats, where they cannot, except by chance, be 

 stalked, while the uncertainty of their movements and 

 their keeping out of cover, renders it impossible to find 

 them like other large animals by the aid of their spoor, some 

 more certain method is needed than the chance meetings 

 which occur to the hunter when in pursuit of other game, 

 more especially as theu- hide is held in great repute among 

 the Dutch colonists, who make trek-tows for their waggons 

 and rheims for their oxen from it, even preferring it to 

 that of a buffalo. The demand thus induced has so dimi- 

 nished their numbers as to have restricted this noble 

 antelope to a few favoured localities, even in which it is 

 becoming more scarce every day, while not many years 

 ago it formed a component part of almost every landscape 

 in the southern and eastern portions of Africa. 



Unhke the elephant and buffalo, it, in common with 

 the rhinoceros, has not so much been driven further 

 inland as exterminated, and many a story I have heard of 

 how a whole herd, numbering perhaps a hundred, of these 

 beautiful and peaceful animals has been killed, bull and 

 calf, by the improvident hunters and their natives, the 



