The Pookoo 2,95 



point westwards, however, for some 60 miles along the southern bank of 

 that river, pookoo antelopes were very numerous. During the first day's 

 journey along the southern bank of the Chobi I recorded in my journal 

 that " from time to time herds of pookoo antelopes, disturbed by our 

 approach whilst feeding close along the water's edge, eyed us curiously 

 and then bounded up into the jungle" ; whilst a few days later I wrote of 

 some open stretches of level alluvial ground lying between the bank of the 

 river and the forest-clad ridges to the south, " the number of pookoo on 

 these flats quite surprised me. Sometimes troops of more than fifty of 

 them were to be seen together, males and females mixed, or again small 

 herds of ten or fifteen old rams, forming, I suppose, a sort of bachelors' 

 club." 



In 1877 I visited the Chobi River a second time, and hunted for several 

 months along its southern bank, but although this was only three years 

 after my first visit, when I had found pookoo antelopes so numerous, these 

 animals had already become excessively scarce ; in fact, had almost ceased 

 to exist. The extermination of the pookoo in this part of Africa was due 

 to a political convulsion amongst the Barotsi tribe on the Upper Zambesi, as, 

 during the year 1876, shortly after the assassination of Sipopo, the chief of 

 the Barotsi, large numbers of natives fled from their homes on the Zambesi, 

 crossed the swamps of the Chobi, and camped all along the southern bank 

 of that river, just in the pookoo ground. As these animals were confined 

 to the narrow strips of ground between the bank of the river and the 

 forest -covered sand ridges, the greater number of them were soon shot 

 down or caught in pitfalls, and the few that were left when, peace having 

 been restored, the refugee natives had returned to their homes on the 

 Zambesi, seemed likely, at no distant period, to be completely exterminated. 1 

 During this period of persecution no pookoos moved either farther 



1 Happily this is not the case, as Mr. Percy Rcid met with pookoo antelopes in small numbers on 

 the southern bank of the Chobi to the west of Kazungula in 1895, and thinks that they are likely to 



