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Updated: May 28, 2025
After breakfast they went to work at briskly as ever; and laboured away until they considered that the hole was sunk to a sufficient depth. It would have taken a springbok to have leaped out of it; and no quagga could possibly have cleared itself from such a pit.
Insects and beasts and birds loved the boulder. The sun-beetle and the orange-tip and peacock butterflies loved to bask on its hottest side, while the old dog-faced baboon squatted on top and chattered wisdom to his numerous family, and the finches and love-birds built in its crannies and bred their young, too often as food for the giant tarantula and the tree-snake; while the francolin and grouse dusted themselves in the hot sand at the base of its throne of rocks, and the springbok and the wart-hogs came down at night to drink; and the woolly cheetah and the red lynx came after the springbok and the wart-hog.
Well, as I have said, Trüey was alone. Jan was busy near the bottom of the tree, working a new rod into his bird-cage, and Totty was out upon the plain herding "old Graaf" so Trüey and the pet springbok went strolling along by themselves. Now Trüey had not gone down to the water without an object. She had one. She had gone to give her pet a drink, and collect some blue lilies for a bouquet.
The American note also pointed out that "the circumstances surrounding the Springbok case were essentially different from those of the present day to which the rule laid down in that case is sought to be applied.
At all times, when impelled by fear, either of the hunter or beasts of prey darting amongst the flocks, but principally when the herds are assembled in countless multitudes, so that an alarm cannot spread rapidly and open the means of flight, they are pressed against each other, and their anxiety to escape compels them to bound up in the air, showing at the same time the white spot on the croup, dilated by the effort, and closing again in their descent, and producing that beautiful effect from which they have obtained the name of the springer or springbok.
Once I dashed into a herd of trekking game so suddenly, that a springbok, unable to stop itself, leapt right over me. Once the mare put her foot in an ant-bear hole and nearly fell, but recovered herself thanks be to God, unharmed and I worked myself back into the saddle whence I had been almost shaken. If I had fallen; oh! if I had fallen! We were near the end of the flat, and she began to fail.
For that reason hunters of gemsbok particularly avoided eating the flesh of the swift and agile springbok; indeed they would not even touch it with their hands, because they believed the springbok to be a very lively creature which did not go to sleep at night, and they thought that if they ate springbok, the gemsbok which they hunted would likewise not be willing to go to sleep, even at night.
On the veld, with the first delicate glow, the head of a meerkat, or a springbok, is raised above the gray-brown grass; herds of cattle move uneasily. Then a bird takes flight across the whitening air, another, and then another; the meerkat sits up and begs breakfast of the sun; lizards creep out upon the stones; a snake slides along obscenely foraging.
Presently he stopped short, and uttering a guttural exclamation, pointed to the earth. "What is it?" we exclaimed; and rising simultaneously we went to where he was standing staring at the sand. "Well," I said, "it is fresh Springbok spoor; what of it?" "Springbucks do not go far from water," he answered in Dutch. "No," I answered, "I forgot; and thank God for it."
Acting on these instructions they had overhauled two or three coasting vessels as they steamed up from the Horn. They now placarded the port of Valparaiso, and put the notices on board all vessels bound westward; and the captain of the Springbok spoke to the skippers in the port.
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