1 84 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



Africa. They are not to be found, it is true, on the 

 Great Karroo and the northern plains in the un- 

 countable myriads of seventy or eighty years ago ; 

 but they are still there in thousands. In the desert 

 north-west regions of the Old Colony, in the country 

 still marked on the map " Great Bushmanland," they 

 are to be met with even at the present day in enor- 

 mous herds. Here the extraordinary Trek-bokken, or 

 migration of these antelopes, is still to be witnessed, 

 and the wild, primitive Trek-Boers of that region 

 shoot hundreds of the buck during the annual move- 

 ment. This Trek-bokken seems to be the result of 

 some curious irresistible instinct, which impels the 

 buck periodically to move together in one vast mass ; 

 usually they migrate to the eastward, and it is pretty 

 certain that the necessity of seeking fresh pastures 

 is the mainspring of the trek. Bushmanland is an 

 almost rainless piece of country, a land little better 

 than sheer desert, and it may be, as some colonists 

 aver, that the springbuck ewes are also impelled, in 

 the trek eastward, by the desire of rearing their fawns 

 on the fringe of the rain-area, where the veldt has 

 been renewed and refreshed, and the young can be 

 more easily provided for. Much more rare is the 

 strange movement westward. Now and again, 

 perhaps once in a score or two of years, the vast 

 herds of Bushmanland springbucks move towards 

 the sea. Whether it is that their instinct warns 

 them that the rainfalls to the east have failed, no 

 man can tell. As a rule springbucks can, and do, 

 exist for months together without water. But once 



