A GREAT MIGRATION OF SPRING-BUCKS. 63 



adopted is generally such as to bring them back into their 

 own country by a different route from that by which they 

 set out. Thus their line of march forms a vast oval, of which 

 the diameter may be some hundreds of miles, and the time occu- 

 pied by the migration may vary from 6 months to a year. * 



"On the 28th (of December 1843) I na d. the satisfaction 

 of beholding for the first time, a trek-bokken, or grand migra- 

 tion of springbucks. This was I think, the most extraordinary 

 and striking scene, as connected with beasts of the chase, that 

 I have ever beheld. For about two hours before the day 

 dawned I had been lying awake in my waggon listening to 

 the grunting of the bucks within 200 yards of me." " On 

 my rising and looking about me, I beheld the ground to the 

 northwards of my camp, actually covered with a dense living 

 mass of springboks, marching slowly and steadily along, 

 extending from an opening in a long range of hills on the 

 west, through which they continued pouring, like the flood 

 of some great river, to a ridge about a mile to the N.E. over 

 which they disappeared. The breadth of the ground they cover- 

 ed might have been somewhere about half a mile. I stood upon 

 the fore chest of my waggon for nearly two hours, lost in 

 wonder at the novel and wonderful scene which was passing 

 before me, and had some difficulty in convincing myself that 

 it was reality which I beheld, and not the wild and exag- 

 gerated picture of a hunter's dream. During this time their 

 legions continued streaming through the neck in the hills, in 

 one unbroken compact phalanx." f 



During the whole of the day's march, the masses 

 of these antelopes, Mr. Gordon Gumming assures us, 

 became denser and denser, till their astonishing numbers 

 baffled all attempts at description. 



" Vast and surprising as was the herd of springboks which 



* Five Years of a Himter's Life in the Far Interior of South 

 Africa (1843 1848), by Roualeyn Gordon Gumming of Altyre, 1850, 

 Vol. i., p. 70 (part of a footnote). 



T Ibid., Vol. i., p. 122. 





