400 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



State is now almost entirely denuded of its former 

 glorious fauna. Nature, upon these crowded plains, 

 seems to have provided periodical and ravaging 

 diseases to keep down the superabundance of life, and 

 the brand-sickte, or burning sickness, amongst others, 

 killed off thousands of game at various seasons. It 

 is a singular circumstance that, although inhabiting 

 the same plains in the Orange Free State, the quagga 

 was never to be found mixing with its near relative, 

 the Burchell's zebra. It was, however, curiously 

 enough, almost invariably found associating with the 

 black wildebeest (the white-tailed gnu, Connochaetes 

 gnu, now also becoming extremely scarce) and the 

 ostrich. The Burchell's zebra for its part is, and 

 was, usually seen in company with the blue 

 wildebeest (brindled gnu, Connochsetes gorgon) ; 

 and the ostrich would seem to have been a companion 

 common to both animals. 



The downfall of the quagga first began, as it 

 ended, at the hands of the Boers. In the old days, 

 the Cape Dutch farmers, to save their flocks and 

 herds, which they considered far too valuable to 

 waste on the feeding of their slaves and retainers, 

 usually shot the quagga for this purpose. The 

 oily yellow flesh of this animal, disdained by them- 

 selves amid the abundance of more toothsome 

 game, was set apart for the food of their Bushmen 

 and Hottentot servants, and Mozambique slaves, and 

 very large quantities were thus annually sacrificed. 



Although this practice gradually thinned it oft 

 the Great Karroo, even so lately as Gordon 

 Cumming's day (1843) the quagga was found upon 

 the northern plains of the Cape Colony in consider- 

 able numbers. Upon the Great Karroo itself, the 



