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“Ere the morning’s dawn cultivated fields, which the evening before appeared proud 
of their promising verdure, despite of every precaution that can be taken, are reaped 
level with the ground ; and the grazier, despoiled of his lands, is driven to seek pasture 
for his flocks elsewhere, until the bountiful thunder-clouds re-animating nature restore 
vegetation to the burnt-up country. Then these unwelcome visitors whose ranks, during 
their short but destructive sojourn, have been thinned both by man and beast, retire 
instinctively to their secluded abodes, to renew their depredations when necessity shall 
again compel them.” 
Although not still met with in the countless thousands described by 
Cornwallis Harris, the Springbuck, we are pleased to be able to say, is even 
now abundant in many parts of the Cape Colony, and Springbuck shooting is 
still one of the recognized sports of its inhabitants and of visitors to Southern 
Africa who go in search of game. Mr. H. A. Bryden, in his well-known 
volume ‘ Kloof and Karroo,’ devotes a whole chapter to the delights of Spring- 
buck shooting, and tells us that of late years large tracts of waste land in the 
Colony have been fenced in in order to preserve these Antelopes. For example, 
as the ‘ Graaf Reinet Advertiser,’ of November 1886, informs us, Shirlands, 
the property of Mr. John Priest, of that district, was, twelve to thirteen years 
ago, a piece of waste land abandoned to squatters. Now there are 16,000 
morgen (more than 32,000 acres) fenced in with wire. Within this fence 
there are fully a thousand Springboks where formerly only a few remained 
“harassed and hunted to death by impoverished lazy squatters.” 
In the Cape Colony Mr. W. L. Sclater, the Director of the South African 
Museum, Cape Town, kindly informs us that in the west of the Colony 
the Springbuck is met with in Namaqualand, Clanwilliam, Beaufort West, 
Prince Albert, and the adjoining districts. In the middle of the Colony it 
is found in Uitenhaag, Graaff Reinet, Colesberg, Albert, and Queenstown, 
but is rare in East Albany. On the north it occurs in Great Namaqualand 
and Damaraland, also in Kimberley, Barkly West, and Herbert. But it 
must be understood that it is mostly confined in all these districts to those 
farms of the Dutch and English settlers where it is preserved, and that 
permission to shoot it must on all occasions be obtained. The same is the 
case in the Orange Free State and Transvaal. In Bechuanaland, being 
wholly unprotected, the Springbuck has in recent years been much shot down, 
except on the open arid flats north and south of the Botletle and the 
neighbourhood of the great Makari-kari Salt-pan, where Messrs. Nicolls 
and Eglington say it still roams in large herds. 
