vin EPIDEMIC OF RINDERPEST 135 



purchased for the most part on the Diamond 

 Fields. 



As was to be expected, the rhinoceroses were 

 the first to go, but the buffaloes, in spite of their 

 prodigious numbers in many parts of South Africa 

 only a generation ago, did not long survive them, 

 for wherever the epidemic of rinderpest penetrated 

 in 1896 it almost completely destroyed all the 

 buffaloes which up till then had escaped the native 

 hunters. 



It is very difficult to say with any exactitude how 

 many buffaloes still exist in South Africa to-day. 

 There are a certain number of these animals in 

 the Addo bush and the Knysna forest, in the Cape 

 Colony, which are protected by the Cape Govern- 

 ment, and there is also a small but increasing herd 

 inhabiting the game-reserve which has recently 

 been established in the Eastern Transvaal. Besides 

 these, there may be a few in the Zululand reserve 

 which survived the rinderpest, whilst a poor remnant 

 of the great herds I saw in the Pungwe river 

 district in 1891 and 1892 undoubtedly still survive 

 in that part of the country. Farther north, it is 

 quite possible that there may still be a considerable 

 number of buffaloes to the north and north-east of 

 the high plateau of Mashunaland in the neighbour- 

 hood of Mount Darwin, and also in the valleys of 

 the Umsengaisi, Panyami, and Sanyati rivers. It 

 all depends upon whether the rinderpest penetrated 

 to these regions in 1896 and 1897.* 



1 I have lately learned that the route followed by cattle which are now 

 frequently brought from X.K. Rhodesia to Salisbury, in Mashunaland, is down 

 the valley of the Loan^wa river to the /ambesi. and after that river has been 

 crossed up the course of the Panyami to Salisbury. In lSS2, and ai^ain in 

 1887, I found buffaloes very numerous all along the Panyami river f om the 

 Zambesi to a point only a few miles north of Lo Magondi's, and wher ver the 

 buffaloes were found, tse-tse Hies were also very numerous. There ca i l>e no 

 tse-tse flies aloii^ the Panyami to-dav, if I have been cmrectly i ilormed 

 that cattle are brought to Mashunaland by this route, and there ca i be no 

 buffaloes there either, or the tse-tse (lies would not have disappear d. No 

 doubt the buffaloes were destroyed by the epidemic of rinderpest in 1896-97, 



