700 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



"The blaauwbok was never known in any other part of South 

 Africa than the ... division of Swellendam, and there, probably, 

 within an area of 100 miles a curiously confined habitat" (Bryden, 

 1899, p. 418) . 



Lichtenstein, passing through the Swellendam district in 1803, 

 writes (1812, pp. 165-166) : "The beautiful blue antelope ... is, 

 as Mr. Barrow justly observes, almost entirely destroyed. Some 

 were shot so lately as the year 1800, and their skins were brought 

 to Leyden; but since that time they have not been seen." 



Renshaw (1921, pp. 24-26) gives the following account: 



The blaauwbok . . . was the first of the splendid fauna of South Africa to 

 disappear. So quickly indeed was it exterminated . . . that it was hardly 

 known before it had gone forever, and was for many years regarded, even by 

 naturalists of the highest standing, as little more than a zoological myth. . . . 



The discovery of the blaauwbok is unrecorded; but in the time of Pieter 

 Kolben, who travelled in the Colony during 1705-1713, it had become well 

 known as the "blue goat." Its best-known haunt was the valley of Soete 

 Melk, ... an extensive tract near the town of Swellendam. . . . Another 

 locality was the mountains near the Buffalo-jagt River, between Swellendam 

 and Algoa Bay. By 1774 the blaauwbok was becoming rare; by 1781, accord- 

 ing to Le Vaillant, the valley of Soete Melk was its last remaining refuge. . . . 

 Le Vaillant's specimen . . . was possibly an old animal that had been ex- 

 pelled from its troop; even at this late period there were enough surviving 

 to allow of this, for in 1796-1797 a small band appeared in the wooded hills 

 behind the valley of Soete Melk. ... In 1800 the last survivors were shot, 

 and the blaauwbok went to join the dodo, and the solitaire, and the aphanap- 

 teryx a victim of civilization. 



Only five stuffed examples of the blaauwbok survive to-day; they are pre- 

 served in the Museums of Leyden, Paris, Stockholm, Vienna, and Upsala. . . . 



And so the blaauwbok heads the sad procession of exterminated and 

 threatened fauna which, having from immemorial centuries graced South 

 Africa, has now long been retreating before the hand of man. Blaauwbok and 

 quagga, bontebok and white rhinoceros, blesbok and black wildebeest indi- 

 cate but too surely the path which the great game has taken. 



Dollman remarks (1937, pp. 68-69) : "Its extermination must be 

 largely attributed to this very limited distribution, since being 

 found nowhere else than in this Province it was impossible to re- 

 plenish the supply once the original stock had been exterminated. 

 The tragedy of the Blaauwbok was that its life as a species was of 

 such short duration, after the arrival of the white man in South 

 Africa, that it was hardly known to science before it was exter- 

 minated." 



