Female similar to the male, but slighter, with longer and more slender horns, which are less distinctly ringed and sometimes slightly bent.
Hab. Arid deserts of South-west Africa, from Bechuanaland north to Mossamedes.
The Dutch colonists who settled at the Cape in the course of the seventeenth century named the principal Antelopes which they met with there after the animals in Europe that they supposed to be their closest allies, or to be most nearly similar to them, but in many cases very inappropriately. Thus the “Eland” received its name from the Elk (Alces machlis), the “Reh-bok” from the Roe (Capreolus caprœa), and the present Antelope from the Chamois or Gemse of the Alps (Rupicapra tragus), although in all these cases it is difficult to discern much resemblance between the European species and the South-African animals which were called after them.
Nevertheless the term “Gemsbok” has stuck to the Oryx of the Cape, and is still a familiar name for this beautiful Antelope both among the Dutch and the English in South Africa. As we have already shown, it is the type, or at any rate the first species, of de Blainville’s genus Oryx, and that must be its generic name, but to decide what term should be selected as its proper specific name is by no means an easy task.
The “Capra gazella” of the tenth and twelfth editions of Linnæus’s ‘Systema Naturæ’ has been held by many authors to refer to this species, whereas Pallas and his followers called the Leucoryx “Antilope gazella” and the present species “Antilope oryx” Modern writers have mostly called the Gemsbok either “Oryx capensis, Ogilby” (a name that is undoubtedly applicable to it), or “Oryx gazella” or “Oryx oryx” Of these three names we think we are justified in selecting the Linnæan “gazella” which has undoubted priority. It is true that Linnæus’s species is based mainly on Ray’s very imperfectly described “Gazella Indica cornibus rectis longissimis nigris,” and that its “habitat” is given as “India.” But Pallas himself quotes Linnæus’s Capra gazella as a synonym of his “Antilope oryx”—so that we cannot justly use the latter term even if it were not the same as the generic name. It may also be urged that traditionally at least Linnæus’s term “gazella” has usually been acknowledged to refer to this species, which we therefore propose to designate Oryx gazella.
As may be gathered from what has been already stated, most of the older authors had no clear ideas as to the differences between this and the two preceding Antelopes, which they only knew from imperfect specimens, and did not even realize that their areas of distribution are in every case perfectly distinct. We must, however, make one exception from this statement. In the Dutch edition of Buffon’s ‘Histoire Naturelle,’ published by Schneider at Amsterdam, to which we have had occasion more than once to refer, there will be found a very recognizable figure of the Gemsbok, which the author identifies, perhaps correctly, with the “Pasan” of Buffon. Allamand’s figure was taken from a skin received from the Cape of Good Hope, and is accompanied by a full and fairly accurate description. Both the figure and description of Allamand were reprinted by Buffon in the sixth volume of his ‘Supplement’ to the ‘Histoire Naturelle,’ published at Paris in 1782. Allamand’s figure was again copied by Schreber on plate cclvii. of his ‘Säugethiere,’ which is believed to have been issued (long before the letterpress) in 1784. It is there named “Antilope oryx, Pallas,” as is also the case in the accompanying letterpress, issued in 1836, and in Wagner’s supplementary volumes of the ‘Säugethiere,’ in which the plate of this Antelope, published in 1848, is apparently also an improved copy of Allamand’s original figure.
We will now turn to some of the chief authorities on the Natural History of the Cape, and see what we can learn from them as to the habits and exact distribution of the present animal, of which the systematists tell us very little. Sparrman, who was in South Africa in 1772 and the following years, after commenting on the unsuitable appellation applied to it, says that the Gemsbok is in all probability peculiar to the north-western part of the Colony, for that in the country which he traversed, which was mainly east from Cape Town, he neither saw nor heard anything of it. But its remarkable horns were not at that period scarce in collections at Cape Town. Patterson, about 1790, met with the Gemsbok in Clanwilliam; and Barrow, about ten years later, seems to have come across it in Willowmore. Lichtenstein, in the second volume of his travels (1812), notes the occurrence of the Gemsbok in the Hopetown District, and writes of it as Antilope oryx. Steedman, whose ‘Wanderings in South Africa’ were published in 1835, devotes considerable attention to this animal and gives a good figure of it (vol. ii. p. 55) from specimens obtained on the farm of Stoffel Jacobs, near Bushman’s Poorte, just south of the Orange River.
We now come to the epoch of the celebrated traveller Sir William Cornwallis Harris, who penetrated far into the interior of South Africa in 1836 and 1837. On plate ix. of his ‘Portraits’ Harris gives excellent figures accompanied by full descriptions of both sexes of the Gemsbok, which he met with on the Moloppo and Modder Rivers in Bechuanaland, and in the adjoining districts of the Orange Free State. We extract the following passages from Harris’s lively chapter on this Antelope:—
“The South-African Oryx is a most wild and warlike-looking animal, not less remarkable for beauty, speed, and vigour, than famed for the excellence of its venison, which is everywhere held in the highest estimation. Although usually found in pairs on the Karroos and unfrequented stony districts, which form its invariable habitation, the males sometimes possess two females, constituting, with their young, a family of five or six individuals. The calves, which are born of a reddish cream colour, become whiter as they increase in bulk, and are easily domesticated; but their uncertain temper renders it difficult at any time to pronounce them tame. Their horns, at first blunt and round at the tips, are soon ground to a fine needle-like point, by dint of raking and whetting them against rough-stemmed trees,—thus becoming most formidable weapons, whether of offence or defence. The horns of the females are much longer and more bodkinish in appearance than those of the males, who never meet during the rutting season without desperate battles, their courage and quarrelsome disposition frequently rendering their duels fatal, one of the combatants often being run slap through the body by a lunge from the long rapier-resembling weapons of his antagonist. The natives of Southern Africa occasionally arm their spears with the horns of the Oryx; and the Hollanders of the Cape have them polished and headed with silver, to serve as walking-sticks, for which purpose they are frequently too long! Strong, active, and vigorous, the Gemsbok boldly defends itself when pressed by the hunter, using its horns with amazing energy and address, by striking right and left at its assailant with prodigious violence. Oppian, the modern Arabs of the desert, and the Hottentots, are all agreed in describing the danger of approaching these animals before they are totally disabled.”
A few years later another well-known sportsman, Roualeyn Gordon Cumming, arrived in South Africa and commenced the five years of his ‘Hunter’s Life,’ of which he has given to the world such a vivid description. Cumming first met with the Gemsbok in December 1843 in the “vast Karroo plains” west of Colesberg, where it was abundant at that epoch. He describes some of its chief peculiarities as follows:—