ANTELOPES 
291 
•westward of Lake Ngami it extends, however further north, reaching Benguela and 
Angola on the west coast. According to Mr. Selous, this antelope is still found in 
the north-west of the Cape Colony, and throughout the Transvaal and Griqualand 
West; while it is abundant on the borders of the Kalahari desert. The springbok 
derives its name from its habit of suddenly leaping in the air; and is remarkable 
both for the vast numbers in which it formerly occurred, and for its periodical 
migrations. Writing of one of these migrations, Cordon Cumming states that “for 
about two hours before dawn I had been lying awake in my waggon, listening to 
the grunting of the buck within 200 yards of me; imagining that some large 
the springbok nat. size). 
herd of springboks was feeding beside my camp, but, rising when it was light and 
looking about me, I beheld the ground to the northward of my camp actually 
covered with a dense living mass of springboks, marching slowly and steadily along. 
They extended from an opening in a long range of hills on the west, through which 
they continued pouring like the flood of some great river, to a ridge about a mile 
to the north-east, over which they disappeared—the breadth they covered might 
have been somewhere about half a mile. I stood upon the fore-chest of my waggon 
for nearly two hours, lost in astonishment at the novel and wonderful scene before 
me, and had some difficulty in convincing myself that it was a reality which I 
beheld, and not the wild and exaggerated picture of a hunter’s dream. During this 
