Our young yägers had now arrived in the land of the blesbok and bontebok.
Chapter Twenty Six.
Stalking the Blesboks.
When they had got fairly within the boundaries of the blesbok country, the young yägers resolved to make halt for a day or two, and hunt these beautiful antelopes. Not that they desired their flesh, but they wished to strip one or two of them of their bright, parti-coloured robes, to be hung up along with their horns in the halls of Graaf Reinet.
After treking some miles across the plains, they outspanned by a vley, and formed their camp.
The following morning they mounted their horses, and proceeded over the plain in search of the purple antelopes.
They were not long in finding them. That is by no means a difficult thing with an animal that herds together in thousands, provided you chance to be in the district it inhabits; and the yägers were not slow in coming within view of a herd of blesboks.
But how to hunt them was a knowledge which none of the party possessed—whether to let slip the buck-dogs and gallop right into the thick of the herd, or to get within shot by stalking—which of these was the proper manner neither the young yägers nor their drivers knew. In Swartboy’s country neither blesboks nor bonteboks are known. They do not range to the western half of South Africa, and the young yägers only knew them by tradition. Their fathers had hunted them years before; but both species had been long since exterminated south of the Orange River.