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Updated: May 1, 2025
He admired their prettily-striped heads, their plump well-turned bodies, their light elegant limbs; in short, he admired everything about them, size, colour, and proportions. Never before had quaggas appeared so beautiful in the eyes of the vee-boer.
Almost immediately afterwards some loud sneezes were heard, and looking to the right they caught sight of a troop of mingled gnus and quaggas, passing and repassing without a pause. Every now and then a gnu would rush out from among the crowd, whisk his tail, give a sneeze, and then rush back again amongst his comrades.
He had hardly left the spot, when the quaggas came out of the pass, following each other to the number of forty or fifty. Each, as he saw the mounted hunter, started with affright, and bolted off, until the whole drove stretched out in a long line over the plain, snorting and uttering their loud "coua-a-g" as they ran. Hendrik would hardly have regarded this movement under ordinary circumstances.
In this disguise of course with the feathered side of him presented to the bird or beast he would get near to he walks along, pecking with the head at the bushes, and imitating the motions of the ostrich. By this stratagem he very often is enabled to get within shot of the other ostriches, or the quaggas and gnoos which consort with these birds."
Rupert was fully as successful as he expected; a couple of pallahs, three springbocs, and a buffalo being the result of the expedition, in addition to the quaggas, and all within the radius of a couple of miles. The waggon appeared in due time, and being loaded, he and his men set off to escort it back to the farm.
Seven animals were killed, three zebras and four quaggas; and as Swinton had requested that they might not be cut up till he had ascertained if he required their skins, Omrah was sent back to bring him to where they were lying. Swinton soon came, and Alexander said to him, "Now, Swinton, let us know if you want any of the skins of these animals to preserve."
He had not far to look for already the animals that were making the noise were close up to him; and he perceived they were nothing more than a troop of quaggas. He was not over-pleased at this interruption to his drive; and the less did he like it, that the intruders were quaggas ill-conditioned brutes that they were!
Such is the African Corrall, or Hopo, by which whole herds of quaggas, elands, and buffalo are often destroyed. The trap consists of two hedges in the form of the letter V, which are very high and thick at the angle. Instead of the hedges being joined at this point, they are made to form a lane about two hundred feet in length, at the extremity of which a giant pit is formed.
The heavy-going eland was soon overtaken, and as it trotted to one side, was passed. It halted, but the quaggas kept on. Not only the drove kept on, but Hendrik's quagga following close at their heels; and in less than five minutes they had left the eland a full mile in their rear, and were still scouring onward over the wide plain. What was Hendrik about?
About this time there was dug another huge pit-trap near the pass in the cliffs, in which many quaggas were trapped; and then, there were stirring scenes, while these wild creatures were being broken to harness, and trained to "trek" in a wagon.
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