178 Great and Small Game of Africa 



country in 1836, some of whom are still living, it seems difficult to come 

 to any other conclusion than that Captain Harris was mistaken in 

 supposing that he met with bonteboks to the north of the Orange River. 

 Gordon-Cumming visited the Orange Free State and Southern Bechuana- 

 land for the first time in 1844 (only seven years later than Captain Harris's 

 journey through the same country), and between that year and 1850 passed 

 through the same countries every season on his journeys to and from the far 

 interior. No one who has read the account of his travels can doubt 

 that he was a very observant man and a good field naturalist, as well as a 

 daring hunter ; and even if he did not know of the existence of the bontebok, 

 had he found these animals inhabiting the same countries as the blesboks, 

 he would most certainly have made some reference to them in his writings, 

 even if he had only looked upon them as a variety of the blesbok. 

 Apparently, however, he only found blesboks, and although these animals 

 scarcely commenced to diminish in numbers in the Free State, Bechuana- 

 land, and the South-Western Transvaal until after 1865, no one but 

 Captain Harris has ever recorded the existence of the bontebok in those 

 territories. 



Since Harris speaks of them as being equally plentiful with the blesbok 

 in 1837, they could not well have been completely exterminated before 

 the latter animals began to seriously diminish in numbers. I have 

 questioned some of the older Boers in the Orange Free State and the 

 South- Western Transvaal on this subject, and described to them minutely 

 the points of difference between the bontebok and the blesbok, and they 

 one and all declared that the animal I described to them as the bontebok, 

 with a large pure white patch over the rump, legs almost pure white, and 

 perfectly black horns, was altogether unknown to them. In fact amongst 

 all the millions of blesboks they had seen and the thousands they had shot 

 they had never met with one single bontebok to the north of the Orange 

 River. I have also been assured by old colonists who knew the bontebok 



