z86 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



curiously defined as are the geographical limits of 

 occurrence of many African animals, there seems no 

 sound reason, other than nature's caprice, why the 

 camelopard should never have crossed into the 

 colonial limits. The rude drawings in the Bushman 

 caves near Graaff Reinet and in other parts of the 

 Eastern province, and an old tradition of the Hot- 

 tentots, that this animal was formerly found in the 

 Amaebi or thorn country (now part of the Queenstown 

 division), are, at all events, some slight evidence in 

 favour of the theory that the giraffe in ages past 

 browsed south of the Orange River. 



The Elephant {Elephas Africanus) is happily still 

 to be found in Cape Colony. In the Knysna Forest, 

 where they are preserved, and where the Duke of 

 Edinburgh shot a fine bull in 1870, they are still 

 not uncommon. In the dense bush-veldt thickets of 

 the Eastern province, especially between Uitenhage 

 and King William's Town, where they are almost 

 inaccessible, and in the Zitzikamma Forest and 

 Addo Bush, they manage to maintain their ground. 

 Even down to 1 830, the elephants in this part of the 

 country were vigorously hunted for their ivory, and 

 must have been then numerous ; and Barrow, in 

 1796, mentions that between Bushman and Kareeka 

 Rivers the country was a very nursery of elephants, 

 and that in this region one Rensburg saw a troop of 

 four or five hundred crossing a plain between the 

 bush veldt. 



The Black Rhinoceros [Rhinoceros bicornis). — A 

 hundred years ago this rhinoceros must have been 

 common in the neighbourhood of the Great Fish 

 River, and between it and the Kei ; and in the rough 

 bushy country west of the former river, not far from 



