334 Great and Small Game of Africa 



In the old days the Hottentots of South-West Africa looked, naturally 

 enough, upon the springbuck as their regular food supply, and called them 

 familiarly their " sheep." 



Until past the middle of this century the numbers of these fecund 

 antelopes were innumerable, so prodigious that the frontier Dutch farmers 

 looked upon their migrations with fear and alarm. Driven from one part 

 of the country by drought and the lack of necessary vegetation, hundreds 

 of thousands of springbuck would pour from the deserts of the north-west 

 into the Great Karroo, devouring every shred of vegetation before them, 

 and sometimes sweeping away the farmer's flocks of sheep and goats before 

 their irresistible march. The trek-bokken, as these extraordinary migrations 

 were called, have for some forty years disappeared from the Great Karroo, 

 in the central parts of Cape Colony ; but in the arid plains of Bushman- 

 land, in the north-west of the colony, they are still enacted upon a some- 

 what smaller scale. Mr. W. C. Scully, the well-known South African writer, 

 held in 1892 the appointment of Civil Commissioner for Namaqualand and 

 Special Magistrate for the Northern Border of the Cape Colony. In that 

 year, such was the trek of springbucks in that part of the colony that 

 Mr. Scully had to issue a hundred stand of Government rifles to the Boers 

 for the purpose of resisting the advance of the innumerable antelopes, which 

 threatened to overrun the cultivated ground, and destroy the crops. Even 

 as it was, the Dutch farmers had much trouble to keep back the invaders. 

 In this arid country springbucks exist for long periods without drinking. 

 Sometimes, however, they experience an intense thirst, and trek forward in 

 their legions in search of water. " It is not many years ago," says Mr. 

 Scully, speaking of the same region of Bushmanland and Little Namaqua- 

 land, 1 " since millions of them crossed the mountain range, and made for 

 the sea. They dashed into the waves, drank the salt water, and died. 

 Their bodies lay in one continuous pile along the shore for over thirty 

 1 Between Sun and Sand. W.C.Scully. Mcthuen & Co, 1808. 



