94 NATURAL HISTORY ESSAYS 



agriculture, they tyrannised over weaker tribes, 

 plundering and killing their Bantu and Nandi 

 neighbours, and harrying the country even to within 

 sight of the sea. The rinderpest slew thousands of 

 their cattle, and, like the Esquimaux deprived of 

 their walrus, the Masai sickened and died in 

 thousands through sheer starvation. Round the 

 native camps of 1890 were found many human 

 skulls mingled with the cattle bones ; charms and 

 incantations had alike proved useless, and the 

 warrior shepherds had shared the fate of their 

 flocks. Thus has the African buffalo indirectly 

 contributed to the pacification of Africa ; dying of 

 rinderpest, it communicated the disease to the flocks 

 and herds of the Masai ; and this once formidable 

 tribe became a mere starved remnant on the face 

 of the earth. 



Attention has already been drawn to the serious 

 crippling of the colonisation of Africa by the tse tse 

 fly, which by biting, or rather stabbing, the trek 

 oxen hampers the movements of travellers. It has 

 now been shown that the progressive emaciation 

 and anaemia seen in "stung" cattle is in some way 

 connected with the presence in the blood of minute 

 parasites called trypanosomes, introduced through 

 the proboscis of the tse tse at the time of attack. 

 These parasites occur naturally in the blood of many 

 wild animals buffalo, wildebeeste, kudu ; the tse 

 tse feeding on them, flies off infected with 



