SOUTH AFRICA FIFTY YEARS AGO 37 



the flats between the Orange and Molopo Rivers were full of 

 sameness, they were also full of antelope, gnu, and quagga. 

 These, with the bird and insect life, were all fresh, and made 

 the world very bright around us. These upland flats have 

 been so often described, that I will not bore the reader un- 

 necessarily with an account of them, and besides, I am not 

 writing of the country or its appearance, but have merely under- 

 taken to try and give some idea of the game that once held 

 possession of it ; and, indeed, I doubt very much if I could 

 convey any notion at the present time of what it was some 

 fifty years ago, for all the glamour of the wildness and abundant 

 life has long passed away. 



On these plains the springbucks were met with in vast 

 herds ; for an hour's march with the waggons say two and a 

 quarter miles I once saw them to the left of the track, along 

 a slightly rising ground, thicker than I ever saw sheep. I sup- 

 pose they must have been trek bokken ; that is, a collection of 

 the herds over an extended area on the move for pasturage. 

 The Hottentot waggon-drivers shot many of them, frequently 

 killing two at a time, they were so closely packed. They were 

 to be counted only by tens of thousands. Formerly, they used 

 often to invade the northern outlying farms of the Boers, and 

 destroy their crops ; and though shot in waggon-loads, they 

 would still hang about as long as there was a green blade of 

 anything. They were nearly as bad as the locusts, a flight of 

 which we saw, by the way, a few days after leaving Kuruman, 

 near the ' Chooi,' or large natural salt-pan. We were at break- 

 fast, when far down on the south-east horizon I noticed a 

 wreath as of dark smoke rising rapidly, broadening as it ad- 

 vanced. In a very short time it enveloped us in the form 

 of a locust storm ; the whole earth and air were full of them ; 

 tens of myriads settled, and myriads of myriads rode on 

 clanking in mimicry of armed cavalry, and crackling like 

 a flame devouring the stubble. Look which way you would 

 nothing but locusts ; they did not hide the sun, but they 

 so obscured his rays that you could look straight at him. 



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