The Blesbok 185 



lously clean coat. I travelled from the Cape many years ago (1876) in 

 the Edinburgh Castle, one of Donald Currie's early liners, in which were 

 comfortably installed on deck a pair of blesboks. These antelopes I made 

 great friends with. They were mild, confiding, and most good-tempered, and 

 always pleased to welcome a visitor. Although confined in padded stalls, in 

 which they had not a superabundance of room, they throve excellently on 

 hay and clover and maintained their condition marvellously. Their coats 

 were always the picture of cleanliness, and showed to perfection that 

 wonderful glaze-like bloom for which these animals are famous, while the 

 white faces and under parts were always spotless. 



Mr. Selous, in his article on the bontebok, has well pointed out the con- 

 fusion which has for so long reigned concerning that antelope and its very 

 near cousin the blesbok. He has, in fact, practically cleared up all points 

 of doubt concerning that confusion and the true habitat of the bontebok. 



From the time of the earliest travellers — long before Cornwallis Harris 

 appeared — the confusion between these very similar antelopes had always 

 existed. Sparrman, the Swedish naturalist, who travelled at the Cape in 

 1775, speaks of the bonteboks of Swellendam (where these animals still 

 exist), and states that a farmer who had travelled to the north of the Colony 

 had encountered bonteboks which he described as " somewhat different " 

 from those of Swellendam. These northern forms were undoubtedly 

 blesboks, although the plains where they were found were christened and, 

 as Mr. Selous points out, are still called "Bontebok Flats." Again, John 

 Barrow, a trained and competent observer, travelling in the north of the 

 Colony in 1797, encountered large numbers of antelopes which he mistook 

 for bonteboks, though he describes them as considerably smaller than those 

 of Swellendam. Barrow undoubtedly saw blesboks, and that in the same 

 region of the Bontebok Flats, which lie just south of the Orange River, in 

 what is now known as the Colesberg Division of Cape Colony. The earlier 

 Boers travelling northward, in fact, mixed up blesboks with bonteboks, and 



