CHAPTER FORTY.
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.