A GIRAFFE PRESERVE.
ACORRESPONDENT of the Times, in an interesting article published on Monday last, draws attention to the invasion by hunters of the last stronghold of the giraffe in South Africa. This is the region of the North Kalahari Desert, lying between the Tropic of Capricorn and the southern limit of the tropical winter rains. This arid belt of the South African steppe is included in the British Protectorate of Bechuanaland, in that portion which has recently been transferred by the Imperial Government to that of Cape Colony. It has no surface water, though a supply is believed to exist at a short distance below. Consequently the giraffes, which are said to exist for long periods without water, but more probably are acquainted with pools unknown to hunters, who even when mounted could only penetrate the fringe of the desert, found there a refuge with abundance of suitable food ; for in the Northern Kalahari the bushes on which the giraffe feeds grow to a considerable height. But the hunters now take water-carts with them, and attack the giraffes in their sanctuary, for the sake of the £5 a piece brought by the skins. A second home of the South African giraffe is the district round Lake Ngami. This is to the north-west of Khama's country, and there three hundred giraffes are known to have been killed by native hunters in two years of misdirected energy. The lake is the disappearing point of various rivers flowing from the more northern dis- tricts within the limit of the tropical rains ; but like all points of disappearance and evaporation of rivers lost in sands and heat, it is a region of saltness and sterility, increasing by a natural process as the waters change to vapour and leave their salts behind them. The British South Africa Company is the paramount power in this region, by the agreement recently made between it, the British Government, and the Bechuana chiefs. Thus both of the best giraffe countries in South Africa are directly under British control, and any regulations made for their protection can be en- forced by the joint action of such very friendly neighbours as the Cape Colony and the Chartered Company. South Africa enjoys at present the unique position of being rich, progressive, and interesting. The two former conditions are not uncommon in great and enterprising new countries, but the third is a peculiar heritage of South Africa, due partly to politics and the contrasts of the three races, English, Dutch, and black, but largely to Nature. Granting that California and Australia have had their gold " boom " as well as South Africa, there is something more exciting in wealth drawn from 'diamonds than in profits made from sheep or canned fruits, and the number, variety, and magnificent size of the wild animals native to South Africa supply another form of interest in which Australia was always deficient, and to which the United States, even before the destruction of the buffalo herds, could never offer a parallel, until the recent and rapid shrink- age in all kinds of large game in South Africa. Mr. J. G. Millais in his " Breath from the Veldt" inserts an engraving from a fancy picture of a South African scene drawn from the -descriptions of the earlier explorers, with herds of wildebeests, buffalo, and quagga feeding as thickly as cattle in an English park. Forty years ago this would not have been a fancy scene, but sober truth. If any one doubts it, let him compare Mr. Millais'e picture with the engravings in Captain Harris's monumental book on South African sport, or the account of the Prince Consort's shooting party during his visit to Cape Colony, when twenty-five thousand animals were said to have been in movement at one time.
It must not be assumed that public opinion in South Africa itself is indifferent to this "interesting" aide of the great 'Colony. The last twelve years have worked a vast change in this respect. From a society of pastoralists, farmers, and hunters, South Africa, outside the pastoral Boer States, is becoming a society of very rich, energetic, and cosmopolitan capitalists, with a strong English bias towards conservatism and the preservation of the amenities of their country. Mr. Rhodes has set the example in this respect, both in "founding" uountry houses in Cape Colony and Rhodesia, and in en- couraging, both in the neighbourhood of his own property and in the "paradise" on Table Mountain, the preservation or reintroduction of the rarer animals native to the country. There is now also a "close time" for springbok, and even native chiefs like Khama and Lobengula forbade the killing of certain animals, among them being the hippopotamus, in their territories. The Chartered Company now demands payment of a license to kill big game ; and when its authority is properly established it will be able at its discretion to protect any species entirely by excepting it from the scope of the license. In the Ngami district this measure of protection -would ensure the survival of a large part of the giraffe herd. The fate of that in the North Kalahari lies on the knees of the Cape Parliament. Is it too much to ask of this progres- sive and patriotic South African Assembly to do as much for their noble giraffes as the English Parliament, and the local bodies acting by its authority, do for " dicky birds," and preserve them as one of the minor but irreplaceable " natural commodities" of their splendid country ? The North Kala- hari is in some respects better suited for such an experiment than any other territory under the rule of the Cape Parliament. The giraffes are there, while man, as a settled occupier, is not yet on the ground. He is only present in the shape of the hunter for meat and skins, with his waggon and water-cart. He is the only man who makes money by killing off the remnant of the giraffes. If they can be saved from him, there will be no hardship to any one who comes after him as a bon'i- fide settler in the Kalahari, the future digger of wells and owner of cattle and sheep. It cannot be alleged against the giraffe, as against the bison or the kangaroo, that he eats the grass which is better used to rear cattle or pasture sheep. The giraffe cannot stoop so low as to reach the grass ; on the contrary, he browses on the tops of the "camel thorn " bushes, from ten to thirteen feet high, which neither cattle nor sheep can touch ; and he is so frugal in his needs that even of the precious stock of water a very small and occasional share suffices him. But like all desert creatures, the giraffe loves water when he can drink in safety; and' when in the near future the Kalahari is supplied by dams and artificial ponds the present retreat of the persecuted giraffes would become a natural preserve, if the creatures are only saved from the rifle. Thence they would spread to other "farms," and their re-establishment would be assured.
We have stated our conviction that the Cape Parliament is by no means indifferent to the unique and national interest attaching to these beautiful and gigantic creatures. If it were, it would be forgetting the fact that since the giraffe was first exhibited in Rome by the great Julius himself, it has excited more curiosity and astonishment than any living creature in the world. Eastern Sultans have presented it to European Monarchs as the greatest natural curiosity which could be found even in Africa, and its visits, from the days of Lorenzo the Magnificent to those of Victoria, have never failed to make an appeal to the intelligent astonishment and curiosity of the best educated races of Europe. The children of modern Afrikandere will have some cause to blame the shortsightedness of their fathers if in bequeathing them a land full of material riches guaranteed by their enterprise the national estate so demised is stripped of the most in- teresting natural heirloons which ought to adorn it, because they were overlooked, and no provision made to ensure their continuance.
The possibility of establishing a giraffe preserve is illus- trated by the rescue of the remnant of a species only second to the giraffe in strangeness of form and, unlike the giraffe, one peculiar to South Africa. We refer to the preservation of the last of the "wildebeests," or white-tailed gnus, in the Orange Free State. It is computed that there are only some five hundred and fifty of these animals surviving in a wild condition, though they were at no great distance of time numbered by tens of thousands. Four herds are mentioned as still surviving, three of about one hundred each, which are fenced in, and one belonging to a wealthy Boer farmer, Mr. Piet Terblane, consisting of some two hundred and twenty animals, running perfectly wild, but protected on his wide domain by the vigilance of his sons and black servants. but he was sufficiently patriotic to stop the slaughter Mr. Terblans is an old-fashioned Boer, a " voortrekker; " of the wildebeests on his farm after finding the dead bodies of twenty-seven, from only one of which the skin and meat had been taken, all shot at one drinking-place on the same day. The area of Mr. Terblana's "farm" is thirty square miles, and the wildebeests are quite aware that they are exposed to danger elsewhere. Though they will go twenty miles in a night to feed on some particularly good grass on other land, they gallop back to sanctuary at sunrise. The wildebeests, with their ponies' bodies, bulls' horns, violent tempers, erratic habits, and expensive tastes for eating the beat of pasture, are far more difficult creatures to preserve and protect than the equable and elegant giraffes. Yet a Boer farmer has thought it worth his while to do the former; and we cannot doubt that before long the Cape Parliament may take steps to accomplish the latter.
Previous page
