yet be rich. A few years,
would enable him to build up his fortune--to construct a pyramid of
ivory!

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

DRIVING IN THE ELAND.

Of all the family Hendrik was the hunter _par excellence_. It was he who
habitually stored the larder; and upon days when they were not engaged
in the chase of the elephant, Hendrik would be abroad alone in pursuit
of antelopes, and other creatures, that furnished their usual
subsistence. Hendrik kept the table well supplied.

Antelopes are the principal game of South Africa--for Africa is the
country of the antelope above all others. You may be surprised to hear
that there are seventy different species of antelopes over all the
earth--that more than fifty of these are African, and that thirty at
least belong to South Africa--that is, the portion of the continent
lying between the Cape of Good Hope and the Tropic of Capricorn.

It would require the space of a whole book, therefore, to give a fair
account--a monograph--of the antelopes alone; and I cannot afford that
space here. At present I can only say that Africa is the great antelope
country, although many fine species exist also in Asia--that in America
there is but one kind, the prong-horn, with which you are already well
acquainted--and that in Europe there are two, though one of these, the
well-known "chamois," is as much goat as antelope.

I shall farther remark, that the seventy species of animals, by
naturalists classed as antelopes, differ widely from one another in
form, size, colour, pelage, habits; in short, in so many respects, that
their classification under the name of Antelope is very arbitrary
indeed. Some approximate closely to the goat tribe; others are more like
deer; some resemble oxen; others are closely allied to the buffalo;
while a few species possess many of the characteristics of wild sheep!

As a general thing, however, they are more like to deer than any other
animals; and many species of them are, in common parlance, called deer.
Indeed, many antelopes are more like to certain species of deer than to
others of their own kind. The chief distinction noted between them and
the deer is, that the antelopes have horny horns, that are persistent or
permanent, while those of the deer are osseous or bony, and are annually
cast.

Like the deer the different species of antelopes possess very different
habits. Some frequent the wide open plains; some the deep forest; some
wander by the shady