African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

by Frederick Courteney Selous

In the following year, 1872, I visited Matabeleland for the first time, and it is within my own knowledge that at that time buffaloes were still plentiful in many parts of the valley of the central Limpopo.

About this time the natives of every tribe in South Africa were acquiring guns and ammunition in immense quantities in payment for work in the recently discovered diamond mines. The first result of the acquisition of firearms by the natives of the Northern Transvaal and the countries farther north was the destruction of all the buffaloes throughout the valley of the Limpopo to the west of the Tuli river, and it is a well-known fact that in a very few years after the disappearance of the buffaloes from this large area of country the tse-tse fly had also absolutely ceased to exist.

Yet for years after the disappearance of both buffaloes and tse-tse flies from the valley of the central Limpopo and its tributaries, other game, such as zebras, koodoos, wildebeests, waterbucks, impalas, and bushbucks, continued to exist in considerable numbers. I myself found all these animals still fairly numerous in 1886 along the Maghaliquain river, as well as on the Limpopo itself and along the lower course of the Macloutsie and Shashi rivers, and it seems to me that there can be no doubt that after the buffaloes had been exterminated the tse-tse flies gradually died out, because they could not maintain themselves on the blood of other kinds of game.

Again, it is an historical fact that when gold was first discovered in the Lydenburg district of the Transvaal, in the early 'seventies of the last century, the whole of the low-lying belt of country near Delagoa Bay was infested with tse-tse fly, and that buffaloes were also very plentiful in the same district.

Very heavy losses in cattle were the result of the first attempts to carry goods by ox waggon from Lourenço Marquez to the Transvaal gold-fields. Ox-waggon transport was then abandoned and a service of donkey waggons established by, I think, a Mr. Abbot. Donkeys, however, though far more resistant to tse-tse fly poison than cattle, were found to soon grow weak from, and sooner or later to succumb to, its effects. Gradually, however, the buffaloes got killed off throughout the low country lying between the Lebombo range and the sea, and the tse-tse fly then gradually diminished in numbers, until, though many other kinds of game remained in the country, the waggon road leading from Barberton to Delagoa Bay at last became quite free from these insects.

It is a well-known fact, too, that up to the year 1878 buffaloes were plentiful on the Botletlie river to the south of Lake N'gami in the neighbourhood of the Tamalakan, where Livingstone and Oswell lost so many of their oxen from tse-tse fly bites in 1853.

Up to the year 1878, too, there were still two "fly"-infested tracts of forest to the west of the Botletlie, through which the waggon road to Lake N'gami from Bamangwato passed. These "fly" belts were always crossed during the coldest hours of the night by traders and hunters travelling to or from Lake N'gami with cattle and horses. During the year 1878 a number of emigrant Boer families, on their way from the Transvaal to Portuguese West Africa, spent several months camped along the Botletlie river. The men belonging to these families were all hunters, and they killed a great many buffaloes, and drove those they did not kill far up the Tamalakan. After 1878 no buffalo was ever seen again on the Botletlie river, and soon after the disappearance of the buffaloes the tse-tse flies, which had up to that time constantly infested two belts of forest near the western bank of the river, ceased to exist. There are neither tse-tse flies nor buffaloes along the Botletlie river to-day, though several species of antelopes as well as zebras were a few years ago, and are probably still, existent there.

Again, in the early 'seventies of the last century there were two "fly" belts lying across the road from Bamangwato to the Zambesi, the first a tract of forested country some twelve miles broad, situated to the south of Daka, and the second occupying a lesser extent of ground of similar character between Pandamatenka and the Zambesi. At the same date, all along the southern bank of the Zambesi and Chobi rivers to the westward of the Victoria Falls, tse-tse flies were present in such numbers that it was no exaggeration to speak of them as swarming, or as resembling a swarm of bees, whilst prodigious numbers of buffaloes were likewise to be found all the year round in the same locality. The buffaloes seldom went more than a mile or so away from the river, and it was my experience that where the buffaloes did not penetrate, the country was entirely free from "fly." Both the one and the other were confined in this part of the country to the near vicinity of the river, where, however, both literally swarmed. In the "fly" belts aforementioned, crossed by the waggon road to the Zambesi, buffaloes were only present during the wet season and the early part of the dry season, retiring eastwards as the vleys dried up. In these "fly" belts, however, tse-tse were not nearly so numerous as along the Zambesi and Chobi, where the buffaloes were present all the year round. Constant persecution from about 1876 onwards, chiefly by natives armed with guns, soon stopped the buffaloes from coming into the "fly" belts crossed by the waggon road to the Zambesi, and a few years later these animals had also entirely ceased to visit the southern bank of the Zambesi between the Victoria Falls and the mouth of the Chobi. After the buffaloes ceased to visit the tracts of forests infested by "fly" on the road to the Zambesi, these insects very soon entirely died out, though other kinds of game still remained in both those districts. Along the southern bank of the Zambesi to the west of the Victoria Falls the tse-tse flies began to diminish in numbers as soon as the buffaloes ceased to frequent this part of the country. It took some years certainly before the tse-tse had quite died out in this strip of country, but for many years past now neither buffaloes nor tse-tse flies have been seen in that district, where, however, game of various kinds other than buffaloes continued to exist long after the tse-tse flies had completely disappeared.

When exactly the buffaloes ceased to visit the neighbourhood of the Victoria Falls and the two tracts of country that were once known as "fly" belts on the road to the Zambesi, and how long it was after the disappearance of these animals that the tse-tse flies entirely died out in these same districts, I have been unable to ascertain. In 1874 I found both buffaloes and tse-tse flies in all these districts, and in 1877, on my second visit to the Zambesi, although I did not see any buffaloes or their fresh tracks in the two "fly" belts crossed by the waggon road, tse-tse flies still haunted both these localities, as I myself observed, and as has also been recorded by the late Dr. B. F. Bradshaw. I believe, however, that these insects were at that time rapidly diminishing in numbers in both those districts, owing to the fact that the buffaloes had almost ceased to come amongst them. In October 1877 I accompanied Dr. Bradshaw from Kazungula—where the Chobi joins the Zambesi—to the Victoria Falls. We walked the whole way along the bank of the Zambesi and found tse-tse fly very numerous everywhere, especially near the Falls. At this time buffaloes were already becoming scarce to the eastward of the junction of the Chobi with the Zambesi, most of them having already moved westwards up the course of the former river.

Eleven years later, in 1888, I travelled over the old waggon road to the Zambesi for the last time. Both buffaloes and tse-tse flies had then long since disappeared from the stretch of country to the south of Daka as well as from the "fly" belt to the north of Pandamatenka, whilst they were also entirely absent from the southern bank of the Zambesi near the Victoria Falls. There was still, however, a certain amount of game—zebras and several species of antelopes—left in all these districts.