African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

by Frederick Courteney Selous

Then not only were many species of richly coloured graceful antelopes and zebras everywhere to be seen, but in the early mornings and evenings great herds of rugged horned buffaloes on their way to or from their drinking-places almost rivalled the lesser game in numbers, whilst, scattered amongst all these denizens of the modern world, the numerous long-horned, heavy-headed white rhinoceroses, together with their more alert and active-looking cousins of the prehensile-lipped species, must have appeared like survivals from a far-distant epoch of the world's history.

Even in my own time all the great game of Southern Africa was in places still abundant, and a scene which I once witnessed in October 1873 will never fade from my memory. I was at that time hunting elephants in the country to the south-east of the Victoria Falls, and one afternoon, when approaching a swampy valley known to the Bushmen by the name of "Dett," I came unexpectedly on a herd of these animals. I had killed one young bull and severely wounded a second, when I was charged by a big cow with long white tusks. I stood my ground and fired into her chest as she came on, on which she at once stopped screaming and swerved off, giving me the opportunity to place another shot in her ribs with my second gun. At that time I was only armed with two old muzzle-loading four-bore elephant guns, of the clumsiest and most antiquated description, but they hit hard nevertheless. Having got rid of the vicious old cow, I again followed the wounded bull, which I presently laid low. When my Kafirs had all assembled round the carcase, one of them said that he had seen the cow after I had fired at her, and that he thought she would not go far, as she was only walking very slowly and throwing great quantities of blood from her trunk. I at once resolved to follow her, and soon found that she was heading straight for the valley of Dett, for which I was very thankful, since the day had been intensely hot, and my Kafirs and I were badly in want of water, as we had drunk all we had been able to carry in our calabashes before we came on the elephants.

The sun was low in the western sky, and, seen through the haze of many grass fires, had already turned from blazing yellow to a dull red, when the spoor of the wounded elephant led us suddenly out of the forest into the open grassy valley, some three or four hundred yards broad, through which the little stream of the Dett made its sluggish way, forming many fine pools of water along its course. Immediately we emerged from the forest we saw the carcase of the elephant we had been following lying in the open ground within fifty yards of the water for which the poor animal had been making, but had not quite been able to reach. It was too late to commence chopping out the tusks, but, leaving some of my Kafirs to cut bushes and grass and prepare a camping-place for the night on the edge of the forest, I went with the rest to cut open the dead elephant and get the heart out for my supper.

It was whilst I was so engaged that I saw appear along the valley of Dett the most interesting collection of wild animals that I think I have ever seen collected together in a small extent of ground.

First, a few hundred yards higher up the valley than where we were working, a herd of nine giraffes stalked slowly and majestically from the forest, and, making their way to a pool of water, commenced to drink. These giraffes remained in the open valley until dark, one or other of them from time to time straddling out its forelegs in a most extraordinary manner in order to get its mouth down to the water. No other animals came to drink in the pools between us and the giraffes. Possibly some got our wind before leaving the shelter of the forest, though the evening was very still. But below us, as far as one could see down the valley, the open ground was presently alive with game. One after another, great herds of buffaloes emerged from the forest on either side of the valley and fed slowly down to the water. One of these herds was preceded by about fifty zebras, and another by a large herd of sable antelopes. Presently two other herds of sable antelopes appeared upon the scene, a second herd of zebras, and five magnificently horned old koodoo bulls, whilst rhinoceroses both of the black and white species (the latter predominating in numbers) were scattered amongst the other game, singly or in twos and threes all down the valley. Of course all this great concourse of wild animals had been collected together in the neighbourhood of the valley of Dett owing to the drying up of all the vleys in the surrounding country, and during the rainy season would have been scattered over a wide area.

It is sad to think that of all those buffaloes and rhinoceroses I saw in the valley of Dett on that October evening, less than five and thirty years ago, not one single one nor any of their descendants are left alive to-day. They were all killed off years ago, almost all by the natives of Matabeleland after these people became possessed of firearms, purchased for the most part on the Diamond Fields.

As was to be expected, the rhinoceroses were the first to go, but the buffaloes, in spite of their prodigious numbers in many parts of South Africa only a generation ago, did not long survive them, for wherever the epidemic of rinderpest penetrated in 1896 it almost completely destroyed all the buffaloes which up till then had escaped the native hunters.

It is very difficult to say with any exactitude how many buffaloes still exist in South Africa to-day. There are a certain number of these animals in the Addo bush and the Knysna forest, in the Cape Colony, which are protected by the Cape Government, and there is also a small but increasing herd inhabiting the game-reserve which has recently been established in the Eastern Transvaal. Besides these, there may be a few in the Zululand reserve which survived the rinderpest, whilst a poor remnant of the great herds I saw in the Pungwe river district in 1891 and 1892 undoubtedly still survive in that part of the country. Farther north, it is quite possible that there may still be a considerable number of buffaloes to the north and north-east of the high plateau of Mashunaland in the neighbourhood of Mount Darwin, and also in the valleys of the Umsengaisi, Panyami, and Sanyati rivers. It all depends upon whether the rinderpest penetrated to these regions in 1896 and 1897.[8]

[8] I have lately learned that the route followed by cattle which are now frequently brought from N.E. Rhodesia to Salisbury, in Mashunaland, is down the valley of the Loangwa river to the Zambesi, and after that river has been crossed up the course of the Panyami to Salisbury. In 1882, and again in 1887, I found buffaloes very numerous all along the Panyami river from the Zambesi to a point only a few miles north of Lo Magondi's, and wherever the buffaloes were found, tse-tse flies were also very numerous. There can be no tse-tse flies along the Panyami to-day, if I have been correctly informed that cattle are brought to Mashunaland by this route, and there can be no buffaloes there either, or the tse-tse flies would not have disappeared. No doubt the buffaloes were destroyed by the epidemic of rinderpest in 1896-97, and their disappearance was quickly followed, as has been the case in so many other districts of South Africa, by the dying out of the tse-tse flies. I fear that very few buffaloes can now be left in any part of Northern Mashunaland, since the rinderpest appears to have swept through all that country.