HUNTING FOR BIG GAME.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXXIX, Issue 10959, 27 December 1911, Page 2

HUNTING FOR BIG GAME.

(By Henry Seton-Karr, C-.M.G.)

The frontier between Rhodesia and Portuguese East Africa is crossed --iUmtaii, whence the line drops downward through mountain gorges beautifully wooded, from the elevated Khodesian tableland, 5000 feet above sea-level, to the Pungwe Flats, jungly, fertile,, but not too healthy, to the Portuguese port of Beira, which is built. 011 a spit of sand at the mouth of the Pungwe River. We were onlv four hours late when I-made the run," owing to the derailment of a - luggage train in front. 'But- the traveller on African lines cannot expect a-London and North-Western Railway." service at present. 0,,,, ' "Are your trains always late. I asked a conductor 011 the line north of Livingstone. )r . "Not always, but invariably, was the cryptic response. - I frankly confess that I. was agrec- ' ably surprised with Beira. It had been described to me as a hot, steamy, feverish hole, no doubt by one who had spent the wet- season- there, and whoso liver was not in the best working order in consequence. I arrived early in July, probably the most healthy month of-the year 011 the East Coast-, and found a " most comfortable and well-ap-pointed hofel; quite a pleasant and, tor the latitude and elevation, cool climate; an excellent and hospitable little English club; and* one of the_ best golf courses in South Africa, owing largely to the zeal and good management of Colonel Arnold, of the Mozambique Company. I was much interested to observe that 1 Beira is by way of being a health re- ! sort for Southern Rhodesia. The wives and voung families of Rbodesian settlers" and officials were to be seen in numbers. Bonny, healthy young white children and babies wore being tended and carried about by Beira black boys of sixteen or seventeen years of age, and I noticed that the small babies seetned quite happy with a.nd ; fondi of their black male nurses. How is it, L asked myself, that the young untutored savage, the woolly, dark-skinned son of Ham, could adapt himself so naturally and easily to this kind of domestic service for the alien white; andi appear to enjoy it? I greatly doubt whether any mother at Home would care to entrust her babies to the charge of any lad in his 'teens, a paid' servant. But the same mother' does this thing without fear, and with successful results, in an alien land', and. among an. alien-colored inferior race. I left Beira, after a few days' stay, for Mozambique, a- few hundred miles north, passing Chinde, at the mouth of the Zambesi, 011 the way. Here we both discharged and took 011 quite :t number of British passengers, for the port of Chinde Ls one of the doorways to British Nyassaland, and the high tableland! of Blantyre and) vicinity, which boasts a little railway of its own. Settlers here are going well, and cottongrowing among other agricultural pursuits, is stated to be quite successful, so far as they have got at present. Among other cotton-growers in the Nyassaland Protectorate is a grandson of Livingstone, who there owns a large estate. But the current talk amoiig Nyassaland settlers whom I met was largely of the feared encroachment of the tsetse fly, and : —even worse —the possible dark shadow of the dreaded sleeping sickness. The simple facts as narrated to me, were that the tsetse fly had made its appearance In the neighborhood of Blantyre, which is the railhead and the capital of the Nyassaland Protectorate, and had practically put an end l to oxtransport between Blantyre and Zoiriba, forty miles to the north. One settler had lost a hundred: head of cattle, another 200 head. Hitherto the Blantyre tableland had been considered free from "fly." and a good stock country. But there was worse to come. .4 case or two of sleeping sickness have been reported f-om within fifteen miles of Fort Johnston, sixty miles north of Zomba, on the south-west corner of Lake Nyassa. The two facts taken together, namely, the appearance of the tsetse fly on the Blantyre-Zimba Road, and sleeping-sickness sixty miles north, were considered a very serious matter. They might mean not only the destruction of the Nyassa tableland as a stock -country, but also the possible incursion of sleeping sickness into the, hitherto healthy Blantyre-Zomba district. Under these circumstances- a certain amount of nervous apprehension on the part of Nyassaland settlers was not surprising. Space will not permit my here enlarging on the subjects of tsetse fly and sleeping-sickness, nor do I feel competent to do so. But it is quite possible that the dread significance of these names to all dwellers in Africa is not fully realised at Home. There are some beautifully fertile islands in the north end of the Victoria Nyanza Lake, which a few years ago supported a teeming and healthy native population. These islands are now depopulated and desolate, something like 200 ; 000 natives (if I remember the figure given me aright) having died of sleeping sickness since 1903 or 1904. My informant was a doctor I met in' Mozambique, who had just come down from Uganda, where he had been, like many others of his profession in South Africa, investigating sleeping-sickness and-visiting "sickness" camps. His account of these camps was most depressing. I turn for a moment to a- phase of the subject of much interest to naturalists and big-game hunters. It is re- , ported that the Governor of Nyassaland, Sir William Manning, has determined 1o exterminate all big-game, in one or, possibly two, portions of the Protectorate near the south-west shore of Lake Nyassa by means of large organised drives into pits, with the object of ascertaining whether big-game do or do not bring and spread the fly, whether their extermination in any given area where both big game and fly exist will also abolish the fly in such area. Meantime the cost of a license to kill game in the Protectorate has, I am told, been materially reduced', and the buffalo reserve near the Blantyre railway practically thrown open to hunters. The buffalo is well known to be a favorite "host" for fly. There is a strong difference of opinion among experts as to whether big-game do or not spread] fly. While one school maintain that big game, and especially buffalo, not only harbor fly, but cause its spread, and so may—this is an inference —cause the spread of sleeping sickness, the opposing school affirm, and cite evidence in support, that the destruction of big game will have no effect upon fly, and—again mferentially—mil have 110 effect, one way or the other, on the spread of sickness. The main points of the latter case are that there are big-game districts which contain no fly, as well as fly districts and also sickness areas which contain no big game; also that. it is not yet established, as I have already pointed out, that the bite of the infected fly is the sole cause of the sickness. In the light of this controversy, and in view of the admitted- uncertainty of the case against the big game, it "s possible that many naturalists and big game hunters, among whom I venture to includ-e myself, may deprecate the reported intended, action of the Government of Nyassaland, at all events until more; time has been given to thoroughly consider aJI its consequences as well as its efficacy, and until expert opinion has been more directly consulted on the point. If it be a case of property, and possibly human life against big-game, the latter, of course, must go. But it is, I submit, by no means estab-. lished that this is a correct statement of the case. It is far from certain that the proposed extermination-will be effective or will achieve its object. Many experts will tell us that, even if the proposed game-extermination be thoroughly carried out, by no means an easy task, we shall be no nearer a solution: than before, while injury will have been done to the' wild life of the country, possibly irreparable in that particular- district, and a loss of license revenue incurred, all to no practical purppse. Unless absolutely thorough, the proposed extermination, as a scientific experiment, will be useless. 'But I freely confess that I write all this with some diffidence and hesitation.