Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 April 1895 — Game at the Cape, 1652. [ARTICLE]

Game at the Cape, 1652.

When the early Dutch settlers landed at the cape in 1652, and under their first Governor, stout Jan Van Riebeek, took possession of the soil, they found the country one vast and teeming natural preserve of great game. Down to the very shores of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean there wandered a countless multitude of the noblest and rarest species with which a prodigal nature ever blessed the earth. The elephant, rhinoceros, and buffalo roamed everywhere; the hippopotamus bathed his unwieldy form in every stream and river; the lion, leopard, and cheetah pursued their way unchecked; the eland, koodoo, gnu, hartebeest, and a number of other fine antelopes grazed in astonishing plenty. The mountain zebras paced the sierras of the Cape peninsula and every other range of the colony in strong troops; tl»e quagga (now, alas! extinct) thronged the karroo plains. In every cornel- of that vast land, upon flat anil upland, in deep and lonely kloof, and over boundless plain, there wandered, free and undisturbed as they had wandered through countless ages of the past, an unexampled array of wild animals. The early Dutch settlers scarcely knew what to do with this profusion of game. The elands and koodoos broke into their gardens and vineyards, the elephants and rhinoceroses made hay with their crops; the lions besieged them in their fort and dogged Gov. ’Van Riebeek ;n his garden. Thera is a pathetic, yet ludicrous entry in the eld records of the Cape eommauden, bear-

Ing date the 22d of January, 1653. “This night,” says the chronicle, “it appeared as if the lions would take the fort by storm.”—The Fortnightly Review.