34* AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



places chiefly, on the buffalo. The hunters of wide ex- 

 perience with whom I conversed, men like Tarlton, Cun- 

 inghame, and Home, were a unit in stating that where a 

 single lion killed a buffalo they had always found that the 

 buffalo was a cow or immature bull, and that whenever 

 they had found a full-grown bull thus killed, several lions 

 had been engaged in the job. Home had once found the 

 carcass of a big bull which had been killed and eaten by 

 lions, and near by lay a dead lioness with a great rip in her 

 side, made by the buffalo's horn in the fight in which he 

 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 started among 

 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 be- 

 ing utterly destroyed throughout great tracts of territory, 

 notably 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 



