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 
Cumming, 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 asthe 
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 inthe country bordering on the Kalahari desert. The 
high veldt of the Transvaa! 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. 
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