THE BOER OF TO-DAY. 333 



window, and shouted, " Ik doch zo bias als jij bei 

 die dek zand kom " ("I thought you would want a 

 blow when you got to the deep sand "). The engine 

 was puffing away at a great rate, and the old fellow, 

 who could scarcely be persuaded to look upon it 

 as an inanimate thing, seemed to have thought that 

 its stoppage was due to the same want of breath 

 that formerly gave pause to his own oxen on 

 this selfsame spot. 



Of all races of mankind, the Boers have in time 

 past been endowed with the richest and most 

 diversified hunting grounds that the world has 

 produced. On the arrival of the father settlers at 

 the Cape, they found a land which for untold 

 centuries had teemed with wild animals of every 

 conceivable size and shape, from the mammoth 

 elephant to the tiniest of those twenty-five odd 

 varieties of antelope which South Africa boasts of. 

 The elephant, the rhinoceros, and the hippopotamus 

 were then plentiful over what is now the Cape 

 Colony, and all the larger antelopes, such as the eland, 

 roan antelope, and others, have only been driven 

 from the Colony itself within the memory of man. It 

 must be admitted that the Boers have not been 

 slow to avail themselves of Nature's profusion. Since 

 1652, when lions wandered through the gardens of 

 stout old Governor Van Riebeek, on the ground 

 where Cape Town now stands, the Dutch have 

 waged an incessant and a frightfully wasteful warfare 

 upon game of all descriptions. Within the last 

 fifteen or twenty years, since they have availed 

 themselves of breech-loading weapons, the decima- 

 tion of antelopes, elephants, rhinoceroses, zebras, 

 and quaggas, has been prodigious. Antelopes were 



