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Bryden (‘ Kloof and Karroo’), tells us that the Brindled Gnu was in former 
days certainly a “denizen, albeit a rare one, south of the Orange River,” 
and gives us Gordon-Cumming as an authority. Gordon-Cumming asserts 
(‘Hunter’s Life in South Africa,’ p. 148) that he met with the Brindled Gnu 
in the Karroo country west of Colesberg, in what is now the Hopetown 
division of the Cape Colony. But Mr. Bryden admits that it has now for 
many years been extinct in that district. In the Transvaal, also, he tells us, 
the Boers have, of late years, played sad havoc with this singular Antelope, 
not long ago found in countless thousands on the plains of that Republic. 
Messrs. Nicolls and Eglington, in their ‘Sportsman in South Africa,’ tell 
us the same story. Writing in 1892, they state that, except in some of 
the northern districts along the Crocodile River, the Brindled Gnu is now 
extremely scarce in the Transvaal, and practically extinct in the Orange Free 
State. But it is still met with in Bechuanaland, and is fairly plentiful along 
the edges of the Great Kalahari Desert. ‘In the Lake Ngami district, on 
both banks of the Botletle River, and from thence right up to the Chobe and 
Zambesi, it is quite common in suitable localities, and, at the present time, 
large troops may be seen on the Ma-Chara-Chara and Mababe Flats, and in 
the country surrounding the great salt-pans of Makari-Kari, through which 
the main road passes to the Victoria Falls.” 
So much for the occurrence of this species in the South and South-west of 
Africa, past and present. But we must now trace its distribution to the 
north; for it is an extraordinary fact that the Brindled Gnu, instead of 
being confined, like its sister species, to a small part of South Africa, extends 
up along the eastern coast certainly as far as Kilimanjaro, and perhaps even 
into Sennaar, where reports of the occurrence of a Gnu-like Antelope were 
made to Heuglin. It is, however, possible that some of these northern Gnus 
may belong to the White-maned species, which we shall presently mention. 
Beginning from the Limpopo, Mr. Selous tells us that the Brindled Gnu 
is found all over this portion of South-eastern Africa up to the Zambesi, in 
districts suitable to its habits—that is, ‘‘in open downs devoid of bush and 
in open glades in the forest,” but not in hilly countries. Peters and Sir John 
Kirk both enroll it among the mammals of Zambesia, the latter author 
stating that at the time of his visit it was ‘“ very abundant in considerable 
herds in the Batoka country, also near Lake Shirwa, and at Shupanga on the 
Zambesi.” As to its present existence in the Shiré Highlands, Mr. B. L. 
