Chapter XVI. 



THE PRESENT DISTRIBUTION OF THE 



ANTELOPES AND LARGER GAME 



OF CAPE COLONY. 



WHEN Governor Jan Van Riebeek set foot 

 on the shores of Table Bay in 1652, 

 hoisted the Dutch flag, and took posses- 

 sion of the soil, he found a land literally teeming 

 with game, and absolutely virgin, so far as Europeans 

 were concerned, for the hunter. Before him 

 stretched precipitous mountains, wide karroos, and 

 rolling uplands, crowded, as no other country was 

 ever crowded, with the noblest, the most beautiful, 

 and the most stupendous game that nature in her 

 bounteous moods ever produced. The elephant, 

 the rhinoceros, the buffalo, the quagga and zebra, 

 the lion, the leopard, and the ostrich, roamed in 

 profusion and in undisturbed freedom over the 

 country to the very m.argin of Table Bay — nay, the 

 strand wolf {Hyczna brunnea) even found its food 

 from the dead whales and other fish cast upon 

 the sea-shore ; while in every river the hippopotami 

 wallowed in countless plenty. As for antelopes, 

 their numbers were literally as the sands of the sea. 

 Within the old and more commonly known limits of 

 the Cape Colony (that is, taking the Kei River as 

 the eastern boundary, and the Orange River as the 

 northern), with perhaps half-a-dozen exceptions, 

 every variety of antelope to be found between the 



