LARGE GAME OF CAPE COLONY. 293 



Colony. Even between 1825 and 1830 Steedman 

 found them in fair numbers on the Great Karroo : 

 while in 1843 Gordon Gumming hunted them on the 

 plains west of Colesberg, and writes in ecstatic 

 terms of the beauties of this striking and interesting 

 antelope. The oryx, in nearly the same form as in 

 South Africa, is found in Northern Africa, and it 

 would seem that the idea of the unicorn was first 

 taken from the representations of this animal found 

 on Egyptian and Persian monuments. 



The Black Wildebeest or White-tailed Gnu 

 {Catoblepas gnu) . — Formerly found in vast numbers on 

 the plains, this antelope now only remains upon one 

 or two farms in the north-west of the Colony (Victoria 

 West), where it is carefully preserved. It was 

 still fairly abundant on the northern plains, between 

 1850 and 1857, especially between Colesberg and 

 Hanover. Unless the few now preserved are well 

 looked after, and suffered to perpetuate themselves, 

 the Cape of Good Hope Government is in danger 

 of losing, at one and the same time, both the ancient 

 supporters of its coat of arms — the gemsbok and 

 black wildebeest. 



The Blue Wildebeest, or Brindled Gnu {Catoblepas 

 gorgon), blaauw wildebeest of the Dutch, has. been 

 hitherto erroneously omitted from catalogues of the 

 large game formerly to be found within the Cape 

 Colony. It is laid down by Dr. Smith and 

 Cornwallis Harris, in their treatises on the game 

 of South Africa, that this animal was never to be 

 found south of the Orange River, and this theory 

 seems never to have been controverted by naturalists 

 since 1837, when Harris made his expedition from 

 Graaff Reinet to the Tropic of Capricorn. That 



