314 BIG GAME SHOOTING 



CHAPTER XVII 



THE LION IN SOUTH AFRICA 

 BY F. C. SELOUS 



IN those districts of Southern Africa made historic by the 

 stirring narratives of Sir Cornwallis Harris and Gordon 

 Gumming, where but half a century ago every species of wild 

 game native to that part of the world, from the ponderous 

 elephant to the graceful springbuck, was to be met with in 

 such surprising numbers that vast tracts of country assumed 

 the appearance of huge zoological gardens, one may now travel 

 for days without seeing a single wild animal. In British Bech- 

 uanaland the elephant and the rhinoceros are as extinct as the 

 mammoth in England, and the myriads of zebras and ante- 

 lopes which Sir Cornwallis Harris saw daily scouring the plains 

 in commingled herds are now only represented by a few 

 scattered hartebeests, blesbucks, and gemsbucks, which still 

 exist in the country bordering on the Kalahari desert. The 

 high veldt of the Transvaal too, once black with innumerable 

 herds of wildebeests, blesbucks, and springbucks, is at the 

 present day for the sportsman or the naturalist a dreary waste, 

 more devoid of animal life probably than any other sparsely 

 populated country in the world. With the antelopes and 

 buffaloes the beasts of prey have disappeared too, and in many 

 districts where fifty years ago the magnificent music of the lion's 

 roar was the traveller's constant lullaby, no sound now dis- 

 turbs the silence of the night, except indeed the ceaseless 

 rattle of the quartz-crushing machinery in the mining districts. 



