African Nature Notes and Reminiscences

by Frederick Courteney Selous

In 1873 I was hunting elephants at the junction of the Gwai and Shangani rivers, and through all the country westwards to beyond the site of the present coal-mine at Wankies. At that time all this country was full of buffaloes and tse-tse flies.

Fifteen years later, however, the Matabele, who had then for a long time been in the possession of firearms, had driven the buffaloes out of all the country on either side of the river Gwai, and as these animals went farther north and east, the tse-tse fly gradually disappeared.

The last time I saw Lo Bengula alive—early in 1890—I spent the greater part of two days talking to him on many subjects, especially game, for he loved to talk about wild animals, having been a great hunter in his youth. He told me that there were then no more buffaloes anywhere in the neighbourhood of the Gwai and Shangani rivers, and that with the buffaloes the "fly" had gone too, and that as the buffaloes and the "fly" had died out, he had gradually pushed his cattle posts down both the Gwai and Shangani rivers, and that at that time, 1890, he had actually got a cattle post at the junction of the two rivers, where seventeen years before I had found buffaloes and tse-tse flies both very numerous.

The history of the country lying between the lower course of the Chobi river and the Zambesi has been very similar to that of the territory to the south of the Zambesi between the Gwai and the Daka.

When Livingstone and Oswell visited the chief Sebitwane in 1853, they first took their waggon during the night through the narrow strip of "fly"-infested country which ran along the southern bank of the Chobi, and swam their bullocks to the other side of the river before sunrise the next morning. Just where they struck the southern branch of the Chobi there were no trees or bushes on its northern bank, only open grass lands and reed beds to which the tse-tse flies never crossed, although the river was only fifty yards broad, and they simply swarmed all along the wooded southern bank.

At this time, 1853, Sebitwane, who possessed great numbers of cattle, was living not in the open grass country, which has always been free from "fly," but at Linyanti, which was situated beyond the northern branch of the Chobi and was surrounded on all sides by sandy ridges on which grew forest trees and bushes. In 1861 Linyanti was again visited by Dr. Livingstone, in company with his brother Charles and Dr. (now Sir John) Kirk. Sekeletu, the son of Sebitwane, was then the chief of the Makololo, and these people were still rich in cattle. After Sekeletu's death a civil war broke out between two rival claimants to the chieftainship which so weakened the Makololo, that a coalition of the remnants of the various tribes they had conquered and reduced to servitude some forty years previously rose in rebellion against their rulers, and under the leadership of Sepopo, the uncle of Lewanika, the present chief of the Barotse, absolutely destroyed them as a people, killing every male down to the new-born infants, but sparing all the young females and girl children, who were subsequently taken as wives by their captors.

After the destruction of the Makololo tribe, the country between the Chobi and the Zambesi was once more given back to nature.

In 1879 I crossed both branches of the Chobi and visited the site of the once important native town of Linyanti. I there found several relics of the ill-fated Makololo mission party (sent to that tribe by Dr. Livingstone's advice), in the shape of the iron tyres and nave bands of waggon wheels. At that time the surrounding country had been uninhabited for some fifteen years, and I found great herds of buffaloes grazing undisturbed all round and over the site of Linyanti, where once had pastured the cattle of the Makololo. With the buffaloes too had come the tse-tse flies, which swarmed all over this district, though when the former left the forest and bush and went into the reed beds and open grass lands between the two main branches of the Chobi, the latter did not follow them. There can be no doubt, however, that when the Makololo first crossed from Sesheke on the Zambesi to the northern branch of the Chobi river, they must have found both buffaloes and tse-tse flies numerous in the district where later on their chief Sebitwane built his principal town. The buffaloes must have first been driven to the west, and the fly must subsequently have died out, before the natives were able to introduce cattle into this part of the country. After the destruction of the native population about 1864, the buffaloes moved back into the country from which they had whilom been driven, and the tse-tse flies came with them. The rinderpest which passed through the country in 1896, I believe, killed all the buffaloes left anywhere near Linyanti, and probably the tse-tse fly has also long since died out in that district,[12] into which cattle may have been once more introduced by the natives, though I do not know that this is the case.

[12] A reference to the letter I have already quoted from my friend Mr. Percy Reid shows that in 1899 he found neither buffaloes nor tse-tse flies in the neighbourhood of Linyanti, where both were very numerous on the occasion of my visit in 1879.

But although it would seem, from the historical facts I have just related, that in Africa, to the south of the Zambesi river, Glossina morsitans has always been dependent upon the Cape buffalo for its continued existence, certain climatic and other conditions which have never yet been satisfactorily explained have always prevented tse-tse flies from spreading into all parts of the country in which buffaloes were once found. In Southern Africa the tse-tse fly has always been confined to a strip of country along the south-east coast, and the hot, well-wooded valleys of the Zambesi and Limpopo rivers and their tributaries. Apparently the tse-tse fly (Glossina morsitans) requires a certain degree of heat in the atmosphere, or can only stand a certain degree of cold; for along the east coast it seems never to have existed to the south of St. Lucia Bay, in the 28th parallel of south latitude, although buffaloes were once plentiful far beyond this limit, all through the coast lands of Natal and the Cape Colony, as far as Mossel Bay. Nor are these insects ever found at a high altitude above the sea. "Fly" country is usually less than 3000 feet above sea-level, though in places such as the district to the north of Hartley Hills, in Mashunaland, tse-tse flies ascend to a height of nearly 3500 feet. Nearer the equator, they are able to live at a higher level, and I have myself met with tse-tse flies near the upper Kafukwe river at an altitude of at least 4000 feet above the sea.