220 



GIRAFFE HUNTING. 



I 



little or no sympathy with the brute creation, a dis- 

 regard to the pain they may subject it to, and an 

 inherent love for the unlimited and exterminating 

 slaughter of the beautiful creatures that have been 

 placed by an Omnipotent Creator upon the face 

 of the earth for man's use, not for his abuse. How- 

 ever, the Boers of the Cape in the outlying districts 

 have not carried on their crusade against the spring- 

 bok and bless-bok without suffering for their short- 

 sighted policy. This is how they have reaped their 

 just reward. They grudged the indigenous animals 

 every blade of glass they ate, and therefore took from 

 the squatter's sheep — so annihilated them. Now, 

 the only grasses that were known to fatten stock do 

 not indigenously grow in those parts. Why? may 

 well be asked. The wild beasts brought its seed from 

 the desert, and in their droppings sowed it broadcast 

 over the veldt. But trccking av.^ay north into what 

 the Boer so expressively calls the Jiinterland, an- 

 telopes, zebras, etc., become more numerous and 

 less wild. If the country be rocky or hilly, you are 

 almost certain to see the koodoo, with its magnificent 

 corkscrew horns and harness-looking marked hide, 

 an animal that weighs twice as much as does the 

 red-deer of Scotland, and is infinitely more graceful 

 in form and imposing in stature. On the same beat 

 your ear may be startled by a sharp clatter, as if flint 

 stones were being rapidly pounded against each 

 other. It is caused by the abrupt retreat of some 

 zebras, the true mountain species, and most markedly 

 dissimilar from his relatives, the quagga and 

 Burchell's zebra, who prefer for their habitat the 

 flats and undulating grounds that margin the Kalihari 

 desert. Stony lands the two last- mentioned detest ; 

 indeed, their feet are not formed for traversing it, as 

 their hoofs are large and flat, with the frog much 

 let down, while the true zebra's is cup-shaped, with 

 the frog raised. The material of which the hoof of 



