510 Ki':i'LAt'i:.Mi:NT of tuiv anch^nt ]■:. afkkak fokicst 



some o'f the nnw oldci" i^rox'cs were actually as small in the old 

 men's youth as they stated, then they had already, as a fact, in- 

 creased somewht before the white man came. It is jjrobable 

 that the increase in the numl)ers and virility of the local native 

 [population which will have accompanied the settling^ beside Mount 

 Chirinda of the great invading- Chief Umzila with his warlike 

 Zulu following will itself ha\e started the ]:)rocess of i)reserva- 

 tion from the Imck — at any rate in the immediate neighbour- 

 hood (^f the main kraal, and some details I have gleaned from 

 okl men, but have not s])ace to discuss here, sujDjiort this view. 

 But the wooding has undoubtedly made its great, and general. 

 s])urt since the white man's arrival, and this may have been due 

 to the fact(Tr suggested as well as to the tamer fires that result 

 from the white man's earlier burning. It is not necessary for 

 most of the species to sup})ose that the ])resent trees are entirely, 

 or even mainly, old stumps grown up, for the main groves are 

 admitted to have been represented by clumps even in the old 

 men's youth (Umzila j)laced his first kraal beside such a clump; 

 it now covers a hundred acres), and, the natural reproduction 

 being good, it has merely re(|uired the removal of the antelopes 

 to allow it to become effective — the fires i:)ermitting. But, for 

 Parinariiiiu, as I have shown in my " Melsetter " paper, natural 

 re])roduction ofl:"ers no ade(|uate ex]>lanation and old Ali'a'owe's 

 exi)lanation, added to that connected with fire, holds good in its 

 entirety. 



Man's influence on the vegetation is a difiicult, if interest- 

 ing, thing to assess with any exactitude. In this locality the 

 black man troubles the large trees of the forest but little — unless 

 one hajjpens to contain a liees' nest, in which case its felling 

 merely antici]:)ates its death from the decay already begun ; but 

 when i^resent in great ntimbers or where the forests are very 

 small, he seriously hinders reproduction by destroying the 

 younger growth. I have been told that Umzila's people, arriving 

 in an otherwise nearly woodless land and commencing building 

 o])erations, felled an immense amount of small forest growth and 

 destroyed some small patches, not containing many large trees, in 

 a single day. The mere trapi^ing of bluelnicks, against which 

 animals Gungunyana (Umzila's successor) is said to ha\e at one 

 time instituted quite a cami^aign, must have entailed a continuous 

 destruction of saplings for the tra]) fences. The i:)rocess was a.p- 

 parentl}- insufficientlv severe, or (better) insufficientlv prolonged, 

 to cause the decay and disa])])earance of any ])ortion of Chirinda, 

 but I am inclined to attribute the present rather decayed appear- 

 ance of the older {portions of Chipete to the fact that several 

 kraals, including the Chief Mapungwana's, have always been 

 located just to its east, and that all the young growth was regu- 

 larly cut down until I commenced to protect it. There is conse- 

 fjuently a gap of very many years between the older trees and the 

 next oldest growth and this gap shows U]) when the former pass 

 maturity. 



The natives' influence on l!ie more oiien woodiu"- would seem 



