Personally, I know very little as to the life-history of chetahs, and I doubt if any one else does, as they are very rarely encountered. I once saw six of these animals together near the town of Salisbury, in Mashunaland. The teeth of the chetah are very small and weak compared with those of the leopard, hyæna, or wild dog, and its semi-retractile claws not very sharp, so I should imagine that its chief prey would be the smaller species of antelopes.
When the pioneer expedition to Mashunaland was crossing the high plateau near the source of the Sabi river, in 1890, one of the troopers of the British South Africa Police Force, who was riding along parallel with and not far from the line of waggons, came on three chetah cubs lying in the grass, and brought them to me. They could only have been a few days old, as their eyes were not yet open. I do not know what became of those chetah cubs, as my duties as guide and chief intelligence officer of the pioneer force made it impossible for me to attend to them; but I believe they were suckled by a bitch and lived for some time.
CHAPTER VIII
EXTINCTION AND DIMINUTION OF GAME IN SOUTH AFRICA—NOTES ON THE CAPE BUFFALO
Extinction of the blaauwbok and the true quagga—Threatened extermination of the black and white rhinoceros and the buffalo in South Africa—Former abundance of game—Scene in the valley of Dett witnessed by the author in 1873—Buffaloes protected by the Cape Government—But few survivors in other parts of South Africa—Abundance of buffaloes in former times—Extent of their range—Still plentiful in places up to 1896—The terrible epidemic of rinderpest—Character of the African buffalo—A matter of individual experience—Comparison of buffalo with the lion and elephant—Danger of following wounded buffaloes into thick cover—Personal experiences—Well-known sportsman killed by a buffalo—Usual action of buffaloes when wounded—Difficult to stop when actually charging—The moaning bellow of a dying buffalo—Probable reasons for some apparently unprovoked attacks by buffaloes—Speed of buffaloes—Colour, texture, and abundance of coat at different ages—Abundance of buffaloes along the Chobi river—Demeanour of old buffalo bulls—"God's cattle"—Elephants waiting for a herd of buffaloes to leave a pool of water before themselves coming down to drink.
Since the first settlement of Europeans at the Cape of Good Hope in the seventeenth century, two species of the indigenous fauna of South Africa have become absolutely extinct. These are the blaauwbok (Hippotragus leucophaeus) and the true quagga (Equus quagga). Both these animals, however, were nearly related to species which still exist in considerable numbers, for the blaauwbok must in appearance have looked very much like a small roan antelope in which the black face markings and conspicuous white tufts under the eyes were wanting; whilst the true quagga was nothing but the dullest coloured and most southerly form of Burchell's zebra. Deplorable, therefore, as is the loss of these two animals, it is not quite so distressing as it would be had they been the sole representatives of the genera to which they belonged, and personally I look upon the disappearance of the Cape buffalo and the black and white rhinoceros from almost every part of Southern Africa, over which these animals once wandered so plentifully, with far greater regret; for when these highly specialised and most interesting creatures have completely disappeared from the face of the South African veld, there will be no living species of animal left alive in that country which resembles them in the remotest degree.
Of course, neither the Cape buffalo nor either of the two species of rhinoceroses indigenous to Africa are yet absolutely extinct in the country to the south of the Zambesi river; but of the great white or square-mouthed, grass-eating rhinoceroses, the largest of all terrestrial mammals after the elephant, none are left alive to-day with the exception of some half-dozen which still survive in Zululand, and a very few which are believed to exist in the neighbourhood of the Angwa river, in Southern Rhodesia. A few of the black or prehensile-lipped species are, I should think, still to be found here and there throughout the great stretch of uninhabited country which lies between the high plateaus of Southern Rhodesia and the Zambesi river, but, like their congener the white rhinoceros, they are now entirely extinct throughout all but an infinitesimal proportion of the vast territories over which they ranged so plentifully only half a century ago.
By the enforcement of game laws, and the establishment of large sanctuaries in uninhabited parts of the country, it will be possible, I think, to preserve in considerable numbers all the many species of antelopes still inhabiting South Africa, as well as the handsome striped zebras, for a long time to come; but never again can such scenes be witnessed as were constantly presented to the eyes of the earlier travellers in the interior of that country.