VAAL RHEBOK SHOOTING. 137 



offers many attractions. In such localities, and 

 especially in the zuur veldt, or sour-grass' country, the 

 klipspringer, the vaal and rooi rhebok, and the duyker 

 may be found in plenty. In bygone days, when the 

 plains of Cape Colony abounded with antelopes and 

 other game, I can understand that the timid and 

 retiring rhebok, with its modest garb, contrasting 

 poorly with the larger and more gaily painted of 

 the ^ntelopes (such as the gemsbok, the eland, the 

 hartebeest, koodoo, and others), was left undisturbed 

 in its mountains ; but at the present time, hunters 

 cannot pick and choose so freely, and this antelope, 

 I repeat, can offer very excellent sport after its kind. 

 Like the klipspringer, of which I have written 

 previously, I first saw the grey rhebok near Naroekas 

 Poort. A few days after arriving there, I rode out 

 with my two travelling companions and our host to 

 a wide shallow kloof, some six miles distant, where 

 the latter had fixed the headquarters of his breeding 

 establishment for horses and mules. In this kloof, 

 and upon the mountains around, large numbers of 

 these animals ran in almost pristine freedom, and a 

 little Boer named Tobias Verwey, who lived there 

 with his wife in a small house, looked after them, 

 and kept down the leopards — very troublesome 

 neighbours — by the aid of strychnine, the only 

 effectual method of dealing with these nocturnal 

 marauders. On this day we rode first to Tobias's 

 house, with two zinc buckets carried by a Kaffir. 

 Now, little Tobias (for, unlike most Boers, he was a 

 little man), who was, I think, the most genial and 

 friendly Dutch Afrikander I ever met with, had a 

 pecuhar talent, common also to Kaffirs, Bushtnen 

 and Hottentots, for finding wild honey ; and as 



