376 THROUGH ANGOLA 



every description ; but he is not mainly responsible 

 for their destruction to-day. 



The slaughter of game became intensified 

 when the Boer entered Angola from South Africa, 

 forty years ago. Trekking to virgin lands where 

 they thought to live their own life, these 

 hardy travellers, expert but merciless hunters, 

 moved ever north-westwards through the Kalahari 

 desert, past Lake N'gami, and up the rivers that 

 feed this drying desert lake till they arrived in the 

 uplands of south Angola, where they settled. 



Along the path of the trek they left not only 

 their own skeletons, and those of their oxen, but 

 thousands upon thousands of bones of the game 

 they killed for meat and skin ; they were to the 

 game of the land as the locusts were to the grass. 



The Boer quickly destroyed the game round 

 Huilla, where he had settled, and then went back 

 to south-east Angola or westward to the coastal 

 belt to carry on the hunting which seemed needful 

 to his mentality and necessary for his physical 

 wants. 



I have no right to criticize these people, loving 

 the hunting life, and living it myself whenever 

 possible. There is, of course, no excuse for any 

 one like myself, who has riot the Boer's need, to 

 slaughter game like a Boer, for no man should kill 

 more than he needs for a collection or food ; but 

 it is necessary to restrict the slaughter of game in 

 Angola for the sake of the Boer as well as the 

 country. As long as licences are unlimited and 

 easily obtainable, the Boer will neglect his farm- 

 ing to make money more readily from skins, meat, 



