226 



THE TSETSE FLY. 



Now-a-days, it is necessary to go very far up into 

 the tropical regions before any game worth speaking 

 of is seen, and there the bush country takes the place 

 of treeless plains, and tsetse fly, and the African horse 

 sickness are often rife. In the tsetse country neither 

 cattle nor horses will long survive, and where the horse- 

 sickness prevails, the only horses worth taking are what 

 are known as " salted horses, " that is animals which 

 have had the disease. Like most of the zymotic diseases 

 of the human subject this disease seems rarely to be 

 taken a second time a salted horse is therefore con- 

 sidered safe ; nevertheless many so-called " salted horses " 

 die of it: either because they have not really had the 

 true " sickness, " or because they are sometimes liable 

 to take it again a second time. A very long price 

 has to be given for good salted animals, say 60 or 

 70; the risk is therefore great, though in the South 

 African colonies the money is generally returnable if the 

 horse dies within a certain time of the distemper. Great 

 difficulty however is often experienced in getting it 

 back. 



As for unsalted horses, the colonial people have a 

 saying that when the horse-sickness is present, " a man 

 never knows whether he has a horse or not." He may 

 have a complete stud at the beginning of the week 

 at the end of it he may have none left. He may have 

 a good horse in the morning, and it may be dead at 

 night. We have known a man to start out on the 

 veld with a trap, and good pair of horses, and to 

 return in three or four hours, riding one horse, and leav- 

 ing the other dead out on the plain, and the vehicle 

 has not been able to be got in perhaps for days people 

 would not risk horses to go out for it. We have known 



