i6o A HUNTER'S WANDERINGS ch. 



nine cases out of ten, and the original progenitors of 

 the animals the natives now possess were no doubt 

 such exceptions to the general rule. Even now, the 

 natives told me, out of a litter of pups, born in the 

 country and of acclimatised parents, some always die 

 of " fly " symptoms. The " tsetse " fly is about the 

 same size as a common horse fly, of a dull greyish 

 colour, with bars of a pinky tinge across the body ; 

 its wings, however, do not lie in the form of a 

 penthouse, but are like those of an English house 

 fly, only longer. Animals, such as horses and oxen, 

 that have been bitten by the " fly " during the dry 

 season, usually live on until the commencement of 

 the rains, but seldom survive long after the first 

 shower has fallen. It often happens that when 

 hunting with horses, outside, but close to, the " fly " 

 country, one is led in the ardour of the chase into an 

 infested district ; if such is the case, and it is uncertain 

 whether the horse has been bitten or not, the truth 

 can be ascertained by pouring a few buckets of water 

 over him, when, if he has been "stuck" (as hunters 

 call it), his coat will all stand on end, like that of a 

 lung-sick ox. On several occasions, horses have been 

 purposely taken into parts of the "fly" country, where 

 elephants were known to be plentiful, in the hope that 

 by their aid their owners would be able to shoot 

 enough ivory to compensate for the loss entailed by 

 their inevitable death, for, of course, in tolerably open 

 country a man ought to be able to kill very many more 

 elephants on horseback than on foot. My comrade 

 W. once made an experiment of this sort, and he 

 informed me that at the end of two weeks his horse 

 grew too weak to hunt with, and at the end of three 

 could not carry him at all, though it did not die for 

 some time afterwards. But to return to my journal. 



