396 KLOOF AND KARROO. 



Namaqualand and Damaraland in the south, and 

 Abyssinia and Shoa in the north. 



The range of the true quagga, the subject of this 

 chapter, was even more arbitrarily defined. This 

 animal, formerly so abundant upon the far-spreading 

 karroos of Cape Colony and the plains of the Orange 

 Free State, appears never to have been met with 

 north of the Vaal River. Its actual habitat may be 

 precisely defined as within Cape Colony, the Orange 

 Free §tate, and part of Griqualand West. I do not 

 find that it ever extended to Namaqualand and the 

 Kalahari Desert to the west, or beyond the Kei 

 River, the ancient eastern limit of Cape Colony, to 

 the east. In many countries, and in Southern 

 Africa in particular, nothing is more singular than 

 the freaks of the geographical distribution of 

 animals. A river, or a desert, or a belt of sand or 

 timber — none of which, of themselves, could naturally 

 oppose a complete obstacle to the animal's range — 

 is yet found limiting, thus arbitrarily, the habitat 

 of a species. I have thought a good deal over this 

 circumstance, and I confess to being completely 

 puzzled for a satisfactory explanation of it, more 

 especially in the cases of the zebra, Burchell's zebra, 

 quagga, giraffe (said, in common with Burchell's 

 zebra, to have been never found south of the Orange 

 River), the blessbok, bontebok, black wildebeest 

 (white-tailed gnu), and other antelopes. 



As the quagga may now be fairly considered as 

 absolutely extinct as the dodo — for alas ! although 

 easy enough to destroy, no human skill can ever 

 restore it to its natural haunts — it may not be out 

 of place here to record its exact description, taken 

 from Cornwallis Harris's " Portraits of the Game 



