In the last recorded
springbokke migration of 1896, S C Cronwright-Schreiner (Olive Schreiner’s husband) and two
farmers accustomed to counting their farm stock, surveyed through field glasses separate
sections of a springbok gathering, and agreed that half a million buck were in sight at that moment.
However, they were counting a very small area, for it was shown later that this
“last great trek of springbok” involved a gathering of herds stretching 15
miles wide and 140 miles (about 230kms) in length.
Lawrence Green, journalist and author of 33 bestselling books on
Africa, relates in his 16th book, Karoo (Howard Timmins
1955), the story of farmer caught in one of the last great stampedes in the 1870s. He told Green that
he hid his family in his wagon, surrounded it with a thorn barrier, and lit a
smoke-fire in a vain attempt to ward off charging buck.
“Some crashed into
the wagon and were jammed in the wheels . . . The wagon became the centre of a
mass of dead and dying buck . . . I saw a snake with a broken back . . .
tortoises crushed almost to pulp, fragments of fur that had been hares. A tree, pointing in the direction of the
advancing buck, had become a deadly spike on which two springbok were impaled. Every little gulley was filled with buck
. . . the ruthless mass was upon them. Buck after buck was pushed into
the donga until the hollow was filled and the irresistible
horde went on over the bodies.”
T B Davie of Prieska
gave Lawrence Green his impressions of four great springbok migrations between
1887 and 1896. During the 1888 bokke-trek Davie and a Dr Gibbons tried to estimate the numbers
involved. In front of them was a kraal with 1,500 sheep, counted by the farmer.
“If fifteen hundred can stand there, then about ten thousand can stand on an
acre, and I can see in front of me ten thousand acres covered with buck. That means at least one hundred million buck. Then what about the miles upon miles around
all sides as far as the eye can reach, covered with them?”
The great herds,
numbered in multi-millions, have vanished forever.
Even the “clouds of
springbok’ visible on the karoo plains in the mid-20th century have
disappeared. The Springbok, a famous South African emblem for a hundred years,
is now a relative rarity on its own land.
It has vanished, even
as a national symbol. Perhaps the black-and-white zebra, Africa’s horse of
different colours that runs free and would rather die than be harnessed for
long, should become a national icon.
