The great peculiarity of the zoology of South Africa is the predominance of antelopes. Here no species of deer, roe, stag, or elk greets the eyes of the sportsman: their place in nature is taken by these hollow-horned ruminants, which have been created in an unusual number and variety of specific forms, constituting a series that fills up the wide hiatus between the goat and the ox. As the traveller advances from the Cape towards the Sahara, he constantly falls in with new antelopes, and many unknown to the naturalist no doubt still roam in the undiscovered interior of the continent.
With the exception of the ox or cow-like species, such as the Eland, whose clumsier proportions and heavier gait remind one of our domestic cattle, the antelopes generally resemble the deer tribe by their elegant forms, their restless and timid disposition, and their proverbial swiftness. Their horns, whatever shape they assume, are round and annulated; in some species straight, in others curved and spiral; in some the females have no horns, in others they are common to both sexes. They all possess a most delicate sense of smell, and their eyes are proverbially bright and beaming. Their skin generally emits a delicious odour of the grass and wild herbs on which they feed, and some have between their hoofs a gland from which issues a secretion of an agreeable perfume.
Africa appears to be their great nursery, but many kinds are natives of Asia, while Europe has but two species,—the well-known Chamois of the Alps and the Saiga of the Russian steppes,—and the New World only one.
SPRINGBOK.
Few of the numerous African antelopes are more entitled to our notice than the graceful Springbok (A. enchora), which has earned its name from the surprising and almost perpendicular leaps it makes when started. It bounds to the height of ten or twelve feet with the elasticity of an India-rubber ball, clearing at each spring from twelve to fifteen feet of ground, without apparently the slightest exertion. In performing this astonishing leap it appears for an instant as if suspended in the air, when down come all four feet again together, and striking the plain, away it soars again, as if about to take flight.
From the vast wilds in the interior of South Africa, when a prolonged drought has exhausted the last pools or watercourses, the springboks migrate in such incredible multitudes towards the fertile cultivated districts, that they have been well compared to the swarms of locusts. Like them, they consume every green thing in their course, and ruin in a single night the fruits of the farmer’s toil. The course they adopt is generally such as to bring them back to their own country by a route different from that by which they set out, but this march is not effected with impunity. The lion, the hyæna, the panther, and, above all, man, make great havoc in their ranks; many also perish from want of food, the country to which they have migrated being unable to support them, and comparatively few return to their native haunts.
While the springbok prefers the level plains with short grass, where it may be able to watch the approach of an enemy, the Reedbok (Eleotragos arundinaceus); selects for its favourite haunts the low grounds covered with a dense growth of reeds. It generally remains concealed until the hunter approaches, then suddenly starts up and flies to a short distance, when it stops and turns round to have a look at its pursuer. At the same time it utters a peculiar sneezing cry, evidently meant as a warning signal to its comrades, but which frequently proves the cause of its own destruction by attracting the enemy’s attention.
The dense bush-forests of Africa harbour several kinds of antelopes, among others the Duiker (Cephalophus mergens), who at the approach of man plunges or dives, as it were, into the thicket, and glides so quietly through the bushes that he seems to have vanished, and the neat little Atro or Ben Israel of Abyssinia (Cephalophus hemprichii), which even the sharpest eye is scarce able to detect in its flight, so nearly does its colour resemble that of the dim underwood through which it makes its escape. In thickets which would be utterly impassable by the larger big-horned antelopes, the Atro finds an admirable refuge, particularly in the green forest borders of the watercourses, where it enjoys the shade under a thick canopy of leaves.
The Gemsbok (A. Oryx) is supposed to have given rise to the fable of the unicorn, from its long straight horns when seen in profile, so exactly covering one another as to give it the appearance of having but one. This robust and noble antelope, which when adult measures little less than four feet in height at the shoulder, possesses the erect mane, long sweeping black tail, and general appearance of the horse, with the head and hoofs of an antelope. It thrives and attains a high condition in barren regions, where it might be imagined that a locust would not find subsistence, and is remarkably independent of water. Owing to the even nature of the ground which it frequents, its shy and suspicious disposition, and the extreme distance from water to which it must be followed, it is never stalked or drawn to an ambush like other antelopes, but is hunted down by a long tail-on-end chase, a feat which only the fleetest coursers are able to perform.