94 



Great and Small Game of Africa 



seems always to have been restricted to the southern portions of the African 

 continent, and, so far as at present can be ascertained, it does not occur 

 north of the Zambesi River. Its peculiar habitat may be described as 

 extending formerly from the mountains of Great Namaqualand (and 

 possibly Damaraland), through the various ranges of Cape Colony to the 

 Great Drakensberg chain, and thence to the end of that range. But at the 

 present day, thanks to the persecution which has attended this and so 

 many other of the rarer South African animals, the numbers of this 

 handsome zebra have greatly declined, and it is only to be found in 

 small troops here and there in Cape Colony. It is very doubtful 

 whether any now remain in Great Namaqualand, where, sixty years ago, 

 Sir James Alexander found them in considerable numbers. It is probable 

 that the Hottentots of that country, who are excellent shots and great 

 hunters, have destroyed the last remnants of these animals in the wild 

 ranges of Great Namaqualand. In Cape Colony, where these zebras 

 are, as far as possible, preserved, small troops are to be found in the 

 mountains of the Sneeuwberg, Witteberg, Tandtjesberg, Zwartberg, the 

 Winterhoek, and one or two other ranges. A few still linger along the 

 Drakensberg. I have been told that mountain zebras were formerly 

 known on the Lebombo, but Mr. A. H. Neumann informs me that 

 there are now none on that range. Excepting one or two places in Cape 

 Colony, where they are very carefully preserved, these animals are gradu- 

 ally disappearing from South Africa, and, no great while hence, the species 

 will probably be as extinct as the quagga. They are, I believe, most 

 numerous and best protected in the Tandtjesberg, near Cradock, where, 

 only a few years since, a troop of twenty was seen. These probably owed 

 their immunity to the protection of that good sportsman, Mr. Hilton 

 Barber. 



The true zebra, from the fact that it chooses as its dwelling-places 

 wild and precipitous mountains, ranging from 2000 to 5000 and even 



