distinguished by their special colours--the black-looking wildebeest
(gnu) next to the striped quag-gas, the white-flanked springbocks,
blesbocks with a blaze on their foreheads, the larger elands and other
kinds of the antelope species. Almost all those vast herds have
disappeared since, having been killed off by natives and Boers for their
hides and for food, or else scared away farther north, where rinderpest
extirpated nearly all the rest in 1895-1897.

In the earlier days, and even not so long ago in some parts, the
farmers' crops required guarding during the night against the
depredations of game. This is still so in the north-western plains of
the Cape Colony, as already remarked. In May most of the Harrismith
district farmers and those of the Transvaal high veldt move their sheep,
horses and cattle to winter in Natal, Swaziland, and to the other
extensive low lands most adjacent, to return after the spring rains in
September or October. Sheep and horses could not with safety remain
longer in those warm regions, as then the fatal malarial _blaauwtong_
begins there to attack sheep, and horse sickness becomes virulent as
well. The high veldt, as said before, is exempt from that danger.

Some of the wealthier farmers can arrange it so that they and their
families can winter at their comfortable high-veldt homes and send
attendants with their cattle to the low veldt, while others, not so
well favoured, must close up their houses and accompany their flocks to
winter in the warm tracts, where they live in their wagons and tents and
escape the outlay for winter clothing.

Owing to the scarcity of wood on the high veldt, kraal fuel used
formerly to be the staple substitute. This would be obtained by penning
up sheep over-night. The deposits were after a month or two dug out in