THE GAZELLES 



879 



,- 



In eastern South Africa the northern range of the springbok extends to about 

 latitude 20, its limits being marked by the forests south the Mababi river; west- 

 ward of Lake Ngami it extends, however, further north, reaching Benguela and 

 Angola on the west coast. According to Mr. Selous, this antelope is still found in 

 the northwest of the Cape Colony, and throughout the Transvaal and Griqualand 

 West; while it is abundant on the borders of the Kalahari desert. The springbok 

 derives its name from its habit of suddenly leaping in the air; and is remarkable both 

 for the vast numbers in which it formerly occurred, and for its periodical migrations. 

 Writing of one of these migrations, Gordon Cumming states that ' ' for about two 



THE SPRINGBOK. 



(One-fourteenth natural size.) 



hours before dawn I had been lying awake in my wagon, listening to the grunting 

 of the buck within two hundred yards of me, imagining that some large herd of 

 springboks was feeding beside my camp; but, rising when it was light and looking 

 about me, I beheld the ground to the northward of my camp actually covered with 

 a dense living mass of springboks, marching slowly and steadily along. They ex- 

 tended from an opening in a long range of hills on the west, through which they 

 continued pouring like the flood of some great river, to a ridge about a mile to the 

 northeast, over which they disappeared the breadth they covered might have been 

 somewhere about half a mile. I stood upon the fore-chest of my wagon for nearly 



