The Blue Wildebeest 199 



beest ranged freely between the Zambesi and the Orange Rivers in parts 

 of the country suited to its habits— that is, in nearly all regions except 

 mountainous, heavily forested, or absolutely waterless country. It is 

 quite certain that although not commonly found south of the Orange 

 River, occasional stragglers were in the habit, forty or fifty years ago, 

 of crossing that stream and wandering, in company with the vast multi- 

 tudes of other game, on the karroo plains to the southward. Gordon 

 Cumming in his well-known book, The Lion Hunter in South Africa, 

 mentions the fact of a blue wildebeest bull having been shot and 

 brought to his camp in this part of Cape Colony. This old bull had 

 been found and killed by Cumming's Hottentot hunters in a most singular 

 manner. It had, manifestly while fighting with some opponent, managed 

 to hook one of its fore-legs over its horn, from which awkward position 

 it was unable to extricate itself. It had thus fallen an easy prey to the 

 Hottentots. Elsewhere Cumming mentions that his hunting friend, 

 Paterson, had bagged a bull of this antelope, " which last animal," says 

 Cumming, " is rather rare in these parts," i.e. in the north of Cape Colony. 

 At the present day the blue wildebeest is first found in the western 

 portions of British Bechuanaland, bordering upon the Kalahari Desert. 

 Beyond these — north, east, and west, — in North Bechuanaland, Ngamiland, 

 Rhodesia, Portuguese West and South-East Africa, Ovampoland, and 

 Damaraland, — it is to this day a common enough antelope. In some places, 

 especially in South-East Africa, it is still exceedingly numerous, and is at 

 times found in great numbers. Its range extends some way north of the 

 Zambesi into Central Africa, as far certainly as Lake Nyasa. In parts of 

 Nyasaland and in East Africa it is replaced by two very closely allied races, 

 the Nyasaland Johnston's wildebeest and the white-bearded gnu, which 

 are treated elsewhere in this volume. The ordinary blue wildebeest ranges 

 in West Africa as far north as Benguela, where it is common, and where 

 specimens have been shot in recent years. H. A. Bryden. 



