A VOYAGE ROUND THE WORLD.
83
1772.
November.
short space, not exceeding thirty yards. The wild buffalo is another huge quadruped, which now inhabits the more remote settlements of the Cape, and is said to have prodigious strength and ferocity. Its horns resembles those of the American wild ox
(bison), and are represented in the ixth vol. of M. de Buffon's Natural History. They often attack the farmers travelling in the country, and kill many of their cattle, which they trample upon with their feet. Dr. Thunberg lost his horses in one of these rencounters, and his fellow-traveller, the Dutch company's gardener, narrowly escaped between two trees. A young one, about three years old, belonging to the second governor, was put before a waggon, with six tame oxen, but his strength was such that they could not move him out of his place
[1]. Besides this there is another species of wild ox, called by the natives
gnoo, which has slender horns, a mane, and brushes of hair on the nose and wattles, and in the slender make of its limbs seems to resemble an horse or an antelope, more than its cogeneric animals. This species we have drawn and described, and it has been brought over to the menagerie of the Prince of Orange. Africa has always been known as the country of
- ↑ We should have gone into the country to see this animal, but we only heard of it the day before our departure. This seems to be the animal mentioned by de Manet, Nouvelle Histoire de l'Afrique Françoise, tome ii. p. 129.
the
