Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/239

Rh

has probably never been surpassed in the variety and profusion of its wild animals; it has certainly had nothing more wonderful than its prodigious numbers of Springbucks. These fleet and beautiful creatures still exist in numbers incredible to people unacquainted with the country, though they have lately so decreased that it is almost impossible now to form any conception of the hosts that infested the endless flats only a few years ago. Where Springbucks run wild in large numbers they are distinguished as "Hou-bokke" and "Trek-bokke," the "Hou-bokke" being bucks (we term all our Antelopes "bucks") that live permanently on the same veld, the "Trek-bokke" those that congregate in vast hosts and migrate from one part of the country to another in seasons of drought. When the country was so densely covered with all kinds of game, the vast herds of Springbucks quickly felt the effects of the frequent droughts that devastate the inland up country parts, and began to "trek." Congregating in millions, they moved off in search of better veld, destroying everything in their march over the arid flats. The "Trek-bokke" can only be compared, in regard to number, with the Bison of North America, or the Pigeons of the Canadas. To say they migrate in millions is to employ an ordinary figure of speech used vaguely to convey the idea of great numbers; but in the case of these bucks it is the literal truth.

Gordon Cumming, who shot in South Africa in the early forties, and whose book ('The Lion Hunter in South Africa'), more than any book with which I am acquainted, gives some idea of the extraordinary variety and profusion of game which then existed, refers to a "Trek-bokken or grand migration of Springboks" which he saw between Cradock and Colesberg, and vividly describes how he stood on the forechest of his waggon, watching the bucks pass "like the flood of some great river," during which time "these vast legions continued streaming through the nek in the hills in one unbroken compact phalanx"; then he saddled his horse, rode into the midst of them, and shot until he cried "Enough." But this vast and surprising trek was, he says, "infinitely surpassed" by one he saw some days later. He "beheld the plains, and even the hillsides, which stretched away on every side, thickly covered, not with herds, but with one vast mass