62 THE QUAGGA. 



describes the quagga as existing in immense herds in the 

 Cape Colony in the open and level lowlands ; and, writing- 

 some seventy years since, Thomas Pringle, the well-known 

 poet of South Africa, who was intimately acquainted with 

 the large animals of the Cape Colony, described the quagga 

 as then abundant in the Great Karroo. In his poem, ^^ Afar 

 in the Desert,^^ he writes : 



Afar in the desert I love to ride, 

 With the silent bushboy alone by my side ; 

 O'er the brown Karroo, where the bleating cry 

 Of the springbok's fawn sounds plaintively, 

 And the timorous quagga's shrill whistling neigh, 

 Is heard by the fountain at twilight grey, 

 Where the zebra wantonly tosses his mane. 

 With wild hoof scouring the desolate plain. 



And in a note he says : " The cry of the quagga (pronounced 

 quagha or quacha) is very different from that of either 

 the horse or ass, and I have endeavoured to express its 

 peculiar character in the above line ; '^ in another note to 

 the same poem he says : " The zebra is commonly termed 

 wilde-paard, or wild horse, by the Dutch African colonists. 

 This animal is now scarce within the colony, but is still 

 found in considerable herds in the northern wastes and 

 mountains inhabited by the Bushmen.'' 



The geographical range of the quagga appears to have 

 been much more restricted than that of the other species. 

 Mr. H. Bryden, in his interesting work entitled " Kloof and 

 Karroo," which may be rightly described as an admirable 

 account of the sports, legends, and natural history of the 

 Cape Colony, writes as follows : 



"The range of the true quagga was even more arbitrarily 

 defined. This animal, formerly so abundant upon the far 

 spreading karroos of the Cape Colony and the plains of the 



