288 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



succumbed. Even a buffalo cow, if fairly pitted against a 

 single lion, would probably stand an even chance; but of 

 course the fight never is fair, the lion's aim being to take 

 his prey unawares and get a death grip at the outset; and 

 then, unless his hold is broken, he cannot be seriously 

 injured. 



Twenty years ago the African buffalo were smitten 

 with one of those overwhelming disasters which are ever 

 occurring and recurring in the animal world. Africa is not 

 only the land, beyond all others, subject to odious and ter- 

 rible insect plagues of every conceivable kind, but is also 

 peculiarly liable to cattle murrains. About the year 1889, or 

 shortly before, a virulent form of rinderpest starte^Tamofig 

 the domestic cattle and wild buffalo almost at the northern 

 border of the buffalo's range, and within the next few 

 years worked gradually southward to beyond the Zambesi. 

 It wrought dreadful havoc among the cattle, and in conse- 

 quence decimated by starvation many of the cattle-owning 

 tribes; it killed many of the large bovine antelopes, and it 

 wellnigh exterminated the buffalo. In many places the 

 buffalo herds were absolutely wiped out, the species being 

 utterly destroyed throughout great tracts of territory, no- 

 tably in East Africa; in other places the few survivors 

 did not represent the hundredth part of those that had 

 died. For years the East African buffalo ceased to exist 

 as a beast of the chase. But all the time it was slowly 

 regaining the lost ground, and during the last decade its 

 increase has been rapid. Unlike the slow-breeding ele- 

 phant and rhinoceros, buffalo multiply apace, like domes- 

 tic cattle, and in many places the herds have now become 

 too numerous. Their rapid recovery from a calamity so 



