254 Voyage of the Novara. 



upon the district of the tsetse, they usually select the moon- 

 light nights of winter, when the insect, during the quiet hours 

 of the cold season, is not likely to molest their charge. 



Many travellers whose draught oxen and horses have been 

 killed by the ravages of this insect, are annually not merely frus- 

 trated in their journey, but, it appears, have their personal safety 

 seriously imperilled by being deprived of all means of locomo- 

 tion. Anderson, in his admirable work upon "Lake Ngami," 

 relates that some twenty aborigines of the Griqua race, who 

 had been elephant-hunting in the north-west of that lake, and 

 were provided with three large waggons and numerous oxen and 

 horses, found, on their return to their encampment, that they 

 had lost the whole of their cattle-team by the bite of the tsetse. 

 So, too. Dr. Livingstone, during a short journey over a district 

 frequented by the tsetse, lost forty-three strong and useful 

 oxen, although by dint of great vigilance scarcely twenty flies 

 had been able to settle amono; the entire herd. We have 

 dwelt at length on the description of the ravages caused by this 

 so much dreaded insect, with the view of pointing out the 

 numerous and amazing difficulties which present themselves to 

 the traveller or settler in certain localities, and how often not 

 only wild and rapacious animals, but even small, hardly per- 

 ceptible insects endanger the life of the wanderer, and render 

 large tracts of lands valueless for settlement.* 



* Most valuable comprcliensive details, as to tlie natural liistoiy of the tsetse-fly, 

 its ravages, and its migration into the districts ■\^ilicll it frequents, are to be found in 

 the " Transactions of the Royal Society," Volume XX., page 148 ; " Proceedings 

 of the London Geological Society," page 217 ; Charles Jolm Anderson's " Lake 



