The migratory springbucks of South Africa (the trekbokke) : also an essay on the ostrich and a letter descriptive of the Zambesi Falls / by C.S. Cronwright-Schreiner.

  • Samuel Cron Cronwright
Date:
1925
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The migratory springbucks of South Africa (the trekbokke) : also an essay on the ostrich and a letter descriptive of the Zambesi Falls / by C.S. Cronwright-Schreiner. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    57/156
    by the bucks that the owner had had to remove all his stock. This was the case with many farms in the path of the bucks ; the veld had been destroyed, cul- tivated lands eaten bare, and camp fences broken down by the resistless mass of antelojoes. Wright mentioned that he had forty thousand morgen of land on the Kaaien Bult, which the bucks had so destroyed that he was removing all his stock from it. Before I left Karree Kloof, on my way home, the cattle from the Kaaien Bult arrived there, having been driven twenty-six hours (156 miles) to be pastured where the devastating bucks had not been. After lunch we changed our direction and drove on, hoping to see a denser part of the trek, shooting an occasional buck from the road. The Dutch farmers were out by the hundred; all day shots could be heard and occasionally a horseman could be seen scurrying along a rand to head a lot of bucks, and we witnessed an exciting chase after a wounded ram, which, when the horseman dismounted, charged him —a very rare thing for a springbuck to do. The whole veld was damaged ; it was hardly possible to put one’s foot down in that vast extent of country without treading on spoor of the springbuck, and the Karoo bushes were torn and broken by their sharp feet. We passed several “ outspans ” where the hunters had encamped for days with their wragons and carts and horses—deserted camps which were marked byash-heaps and charred bones and the straw