j6 Great and Small Game of Africa 



aver that it is by no means an easy matter to ride into one of these animals; 

 and the hunter must be exceedingly well mounted to accomplish the feat. 

 Mr. Selous, however, tells me that he has on several occasions ridden 

 up to and even past a troop of Burchell's zebras. It is possible that the 

 somewhat slower pace of the true quagga may have led to the animal's 

 comparatively early extermination. It is certain that both quagga and 

 Burchell's zebra formerly ranged the plains of the Orange Free State 

 together. It seems equally certain that the true quagga had become 

 extinct there before Burchell's zebra had been shot out. In the old days the 

 frontier Boers of Cape Colony fed their Hottentot and other native servants 

 chiefly on the meat of the quagga and black wildebeest, reserving the 

 daintier venison of the springbuck and other game for their own con- 

 sumption. It is more than probable that the quagga became exterminated 

 both in the Cape Colony and in the Orange Free State at an earlier period 

 than other varieties of game from the fact that it was more easily shot. 

 The skin, too, of this animal was always in request. The Dutch colonists 

 not only sold it, but themselves used it for a variety of purposes. It 

 made excellent leather for the vclschoons — home-made shoes — which every 

 up-country Boer still manufactures for himself and his family. And it 

 was used also, constantly, for making hide sacks or bags. I can remember 

 in the Cape Colony, in the year 1876, that wandering Dutch farmers, 

 trekking through the mountains in which I then resided, occasionally pulled 

 out oi their waggons old quagga- hide sacks, in which they carried dried 

 peaches, quinces, walnuts, and other articles for sale. These sacks were 

 manifestly of considerable antiquity, for the quagga had by that time 

 become quite extinct in every part of the Cape Colony. In the Orange 

 Free State the Dutch colonists were for more than a generation quite as 

 much hide-hunters as pastoral farmers. They found, unfortunately, a good 

 market tor their skins, and they busied themselves therefore in shooting down, 

 at the least possible expense to themselves, and with the greatest possible 



