Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/241

Rh Bult, in the district of Prieska, and then resumed their trek in search of better veld. Mr. J.W. Wright, a relative of mine, was then living at Karree Kloof, a farm about ten hours by cart (six miles to the hour) west of the railway in the district of Hope Town. In July, 1896, he wrote that the Trek-bokke were approaching Karree Kloof, and invited me to come and see them. Believing that such a large "trek" might never be seen again, I accepted his invitation.

Starting by train from Kimberley, I alighted at Kran Kuil, a railway station not far south of the Orange River. Leaving Kran Kuil by postcart early next morning, and passing the little village of Strydenburg, with its immense "pan," the home when full of thousands of wild-fowl, after a ten hours' drive in a rickety cart, one of whose wheels was dished the wrong way, and threatened to fall to pieces every moment, I reached Karree Kloof at sundown. Our conversation that evening was of course largely about the Springbucks. Some hundred yards to the back of the house stands a kraal. Ten or fifteen years earlier Mr. Wright saw the Trekbokke stream through between the house and the kraal. The present trek had approached within about four hours of Karree Kloof, and then turned, and was now some distance farther away. We started in a four-in-hand Cape-cart next day to see the Bucks. Passing through veld where the trek had recently been, and by many a dead Buck, we slept that night at Omdraai's Vley, in the district of Prieska, where two young Englishmen had an accommodation house and a country shop. Over a large fire that evening (it was mid-winter and freezing hard every night) we heard the latest news of the trek. The nearest Bucks were then about two hours farther on. A portion had passed over Omdraai's Vley, taking their way through a wire-fenced Ostrich camp, breaking some of the wires. To clear this camp of those that remained in, about one thousand had to be shot, one of which was an albino. A large number had of course been wounded and many kids, whose mothers had been shot, died. In that camp alone two thousand must have perished. The owners of the shop were buying Springbuck skins at 5d. and 6d. each at the rate of three thousand a week, and had already purchased thousands of pounds of "biltong" (the raw flesh cut into narrow strips and dried), as had also Mr. Wright at Karree Kloof. It was reckoned that, in the district of Prieska alone, some hundreds of thousands of Bucks had been shot, and nearly as many wounded, and the little kids were dying in thousands; yet there was no appreciable diminution in their numbers. Among other things, we heard that various wild carnivora were following the trek, a Leopard having been shot in the open veld, and "Wild Dogs" (Lycaon pictus) having been seen in pursuit; also that Antelopes, unknown in those parts for many years, had appeared, carried along in the living flood which was pouring over the country. In