IX TSE-TSE FLY NEAR DEL AGO A BAY 153 



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 Louren^o 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 



