18 
of the Mammals of Griffith’s ‘ Animal Kingdom’ a full description is given 
cf this specimen (of which a pair of horns now alone remains in the National 
Collection), accompanied by a good uncoloured figure of it drawn by Thomas 
Landseer. 
Sir Andrew Smith, whose journeys in the Cape districts took place from 
1834 to 1836, published a coloured figure of this Antelope in 1840, in his 
‘Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa,’ and gives us the following 
account of its distribution in those days :— 
“The range of this species is very wide, and specimens have been found wherever 
Southern Africa has been explored. Not very many years ago the animal was frequently 
seen within the northern boundary of the Cape Colony, and if we are to credit the 
statements of the aborigines there was a time when it occurred much more to the 
southward than even the locality alluded to, and from which it has now in a great 
measure, if not completely, disappeared. It is an animal which congregates, and 
commonly from six to twelve individuals are found associated together. Herds of this 
description are generally met in districts abounding with small hills or hilly ridges, and 
to such elevations they appear to resort in preference to the plains. The number of 
herds in any given tract is comparatively small, so that the animal, though generally 
diffused, is, nevertheless, nowhere abundant. Its pace is a gallop, which, in appearance, 
is of a heavy character, but its progress is amazingly rapid. It is an animal extremely 
vigilant, and always appears to be in fear of enemies; hence it comes seldom within the 
range of the hunter’s gun.” 
The well-known sportsman and naturalist Sir William Cornwallis Harris, 
whose expedition through the interior of the Colony up to the Tropic of 
Capricorn took place in 1836 and 1837, writes in his usual charming style 
of this favourite object of the hunter’s pursuit * :— 
“ Not less from its singular beauty than from its extreme rarity, there were few game 
animals in the whole African catalogue that I more eagerly sought for than the Roan 
Antelope—my hankering after its gay spoils being moreover greatly increased by the 
difficulties that I at first experienced in obtaining possession of them. According 
to indications given by my kind friend Dr. Smith, in whose cabinet I had seen this 
noble and imposing Antelope, it was on an elevated tract of rocky table-land forming a 
terrace on the mountains between Daniel’s Kuil and Kramer’s Fontein, that I first 
disturbed a herd whilst wandering alone in search of them along the ‘ rigging’ of the 
hills. ‘Tbe thin covering of earth supported only a scant and faded vegetation, together 
with a few scrubby trees and bushes which grew from the fissures of the rock. Sur- 
* * Portraits of the Game and Wild Animals of South Africa,’ p. 93. 
