52 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



a few fragments ; the hyaenas have cracked and 

 swallowed the very bones themselves, and the rising 

 sun looks down upon a deserted beach. The gulls 

 and cormorants ply their trade as yesterday, and 

 many yesterdays before. Inland, the baboons 

 chatter amid the kloofs ; the hyrax youngsters play 

 like kittens in and out of the rock caves. Black 

 rhinoceroses, active and agile, climb Table Moun- 

 tain ; hippopotami bellow over the future site of 

 Capetown. The beautiful blaauwbok antelope now 

 alas! extinct pastures with springbok and bontebok 

 in all the southern valleys ; the craggy uplands 

 harbour strong troops of Cape zebras, wary and 

 and surefooted, true equine mountaineers. 



Never comes the trader, never comes the European flag 

 Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer 

 from the crag. 



So it has ever been, through the long centuries ; 

 shall it not continue so to the end ? 



A sail appears on the horizon, then another and 

 another. It is the Dutch under Van Riebeck, 

 coming to found a colony at the Cape of Storms. 

 Slowly the clumsy vessels make the land, harbingers 

 of European civilisation. The anchor rattles over 

 the bows, disturbing the peace of centuries. The 

 white man has come to South Africa. 



It is the beginning of the end. 



