CHAPTER XXIII. 
THE SABLE ANTELOPE. 
“tis Deans seemed great, in good proportion lev, 
Well barred ant round, twyell pearted near his heav, 
We seemed fapre "tween hlacke and berrie brounde, 
We seems well fet By all the siqnes E fous. * © * 
Whe tors were great, the joynt bones rowuny any short, 
The shinne bones large, the Velwclawes clase in port: 
Short iopnted was he, hollow-footed eke, 
Anv hart tu Hunt ag any man can seeke,’” 
The Noble Art of Venerie or Hunting. 
‘“ APRICA was justly looked upon by the ancients as the land of Zoological prodigies. It is not possible to open the 
works of those among them who have treated of the natural productions of the country, without finding some passage in 
unison with the general opinion of the time, that in this wild quarter of the globe, nature sported even to prodigality, and 
was profuse of monsters in her chartered libertinism. Her wildernesses formed the principal source whence was drawn the 
stream of animal life that soaked the Roman Arena, where the cross now towers as if to expiate the deeds of blood done 
on its site; and from her innumerable wonders, natural as well as unnatural, it passed into a Greek by-word, that she was 
always producing something new.”* 
Next to the slaughter of the prond Giraffe, the desire nearest to my heart from the very outset of our campaign 
against the Fere Nature had been to discover something new. Not a new lizard, or a new rat, no, nor even—by which to 
immortalise myself as a naturalist —a new weasel; but an entirely new something or other, I cared not what, whereupon an 
humble disciple of the chaste Huntress might reasonably pique himself; some stately quarry whose portrait might not be the 
least conspicuous in the well-filled gallery of African “ beastis of enchase,” and whose spoils— unknown to science, and adorn- 
ing no museum of trophies saving mine own, might fill some prominent niche in halls 
‘with woodland honours grac’d,” 
The catalogue of large animals humbled, had already exceeded four hundred head of yarious sorts and sizes—many of them 
passing rare and rechershdé — novelties altogether even to the dwellers in the colony; and excepting a few of the smaller ante- 
lopes which are restricted to certain portions of the coast that we subsequently proposed to visit on our return to civilization 
—my collection of eawie had extended to every species of game quadruped known to inhabit the continent south of the 
Tropic. But “Africa semper aliquid novi offert’ —the proud trophy that I coveted was yet in abeyance; and the truly 
splendid addition to the mammiferes which forms the subject of the portrait annexed, was shortly to be realized, 
‘«To crown our triumph and our toils reward.” 
My double-barrelled rifle having, under the influence of an evil star, again suffered in a fall with my horse, I took the 
field on the 13th of December, with a heavy weapon built upon the primitive principle of flint and steel, the which, as a pis 
aller, 1 had obtained whilst at Litakoo from our kind friend Mr. Moffat. Our whole party, with exception of Piet, who was 
still laid up with the shot through his leg, were in full pursuit of a wounded elephant on the southern side of the Cashan 
mountains, when a clump of unusually swarthy looking antelopes attracted observation in an adjacent valley which stretched 
away at the foot of the steep grassy ridge that we were ascending. One great fellow, evidently the chief, looking as black 
as an undertaker’s mute, and appearing to be covered with long shaggy hair, was standing the nearest, his head and fore-hand 
only protruded beyond a thick green bush, from a siesta in which, the alarm occasioned by our advent appeared to have dis- 
turbed him. Whilst the apathetic Hottentots were Des and carelessly inquiring of each other ‘vat swart bok is dat ?+ 
I reconnoitred the group through a pocket telescope, and as they slowly emerged from the covert into the open glade, at a 
glance convinced myself that they were perfectly new to science. Hastily announcing this fact, together with my determination 
* Quarterly Review, No, exxvii,, p, 189. 
+ What black buck is that? 
