THE BLAAUWBOK. 445 



The brief history of the Blaauwbok is a miserable record of 

 speedy extermination. The actual date of its discovery will 

 probably never be known. Kolben, who visited the Cape between 

 1700 and 1710, mentions the "Blue Goat"; but the species was 

 first definitely described by Pallas, who examined, in 1766, a 

 specimen preserved at Leyden — the first one known to have been 

 brought to Europe. From the little that is recorded of the 

 animal, it appears to have been nowhere abundant. Le Vaillant 

 gives as a locality, *' the valley of Soete Melk, the only canton 

 which they inhabit," and subsequently Lichtenstein mentions 

 the mountains near the Buffalo-jagt River, between Swellendam 

 and Algoa Bay, as one of the last refuges of the Blaauwbok. 

 Le Vaillant obtained his specimen (ahull) in 1781; already it 

 had become "the most scarce and beautiful species of the African 

 Gazells." Sir John Barrow, whose work on South Africa was 

 published in 1801, remarks that in his day the Blaauwbok was 

 almost exterminated ; while Lichtenstein says that *' some " 

 were shot in 1800, but that since then no more had been seen. 

 These Blaauwbok of 1800 were, in fact, the last of their race. 



Nevertheless, the 'post-mortem existence upon which the 

 species has entered has proved almost as lively as that which it 

 enjoyed in the tiesh ; for as the years passed by, and no new 

 examples were obtained, naturalists began to inquire for it with 

 a zeal similar to that which animated the would-be discoverers 

 of the living Moa in New Zealand, and, more recently, the 

 searchers after the Ground-Sloth (Mylodon listai) in Pata- 

 gonia. Sir Andrew Smith, in 1835, searched for it in vain; he 

 also says that, after studying a carefully executed drawing of the 

 Blaauwbok in the Paris Museum, he concluded that the sketch 

 represented merely a young Boan Antelope. His friend Sir 

 Cornwallis Harris, who, during 1836-7, enthusiastically shot 

 specimens of every kind of South African game animal for his 

 collection, inquired persistently for the Blaauwbok without suc- 

 cess. " For the last forty years," writes Harris, " not an indi- 

 vidual has been heard of in Southern Africa " ; and he adds : 

 " For a leucophcea I would willingly have given a finger of my 

 right hand." Finally, many zoologists boldly declared the 

 Blaauwbok to have been a zoological myth, asserting that the 

 few specimens still existing were merely small or young Roan 



