Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/240

214 of Springboks; as far as the eye could strain the landscape was alive with them, until they softened down into a dim mass of living creatures." It would be vain, he says, to attempt to form any idea of the number of Antelopes he saw on that day, but he has no hesitation in saying that "some hundreds of thousands were within the compass of my (his) vision." A Boer with whom he was shooting acknowledged that "it was a very fair Trek-bokken, but observed that it was not many when compared with what he had seen." "This morning," remarked the Boer, "you beheld only one flat covered with Springboks, but I give you my word that I have ridden a long day's journey over a succession of flats covered with them as far as I could see, and as thick as Sheep in a fold."

A generation back they trekked in such dense masses that they used sometimes to pass right through the streets of the small up-country towns. I have known old people who walked among them, and actually now and then touched them with their hand. Men have gone in armed only with a heavy stick, and killed as many as they wished. Native herdsmen have been trampled to death by the Bucks, and droves of Afrikander Sheep carried away, never to be recovered, in the surging crowd. So dense is the mass at times, and so overpowering the pressure from the millions behind, that if a sluit (gully) is come to, so wide and deep that the Bucks cannot leap over or go through it, the front ranks are forced in until it is levelled up by their bodies, when the mass marches over and continues its irresistible way. Again, when they come to our large rivers, which run almost dry before the summer storms fall, the thirsty creatures stream over the steep banks into the bed of the river, and drink themselves heavy with water. They crowd into the river-bed quicker than they can get out, and the crush is so great at times as they climb the steep banks that men have gone in on foot unarmed, and secured as many as they wished simply by catching them with the naked hand and breaking their hind legs. There was a certain element of danger in doing this, for, if the Bucks turned, the hunters ran the risk of being trampled to death. The density of such masses may be imagined when one remembers how timid and wary of approach these Antelopes are.

The Cape Colony has from time to time during recent years been visited by the Trek-bokke, though not in such numbers as the old farmers used to describe, and, I have no doubt, truthfully describe. In 1895, however, the up-country was suffering from a long drought, which was particularly severe in Namaqualand; and the Trek-bokke began to move well into the Colony. There were rumours of their coming, and then it was said that they were unusually numerous—that it was a "big trek." This soon proved to be the case. It was eventually known that they had not appeared in such numbers for thirty or forty years. They kidded on the Kaaien