136 AFRICAN NATURE NOTES CHAP. 



To the west of the river Gwai, however, I believe 

 that few, if any, buffaloes still survive in the interior 

 of South Africa, though in my own personal experi- 

 ence I met with these animals in extraordinary 

 numbers wherever I hunted between 1872 and 

 1880 in that part of the country, whether to the 

 south-east of the Victoria Falls, or farther westwards 

 along the Zambesi and as far as I went along the 

 Chobi, or in the valleys of the Machabi (an overflow 

 from the Okavango), the Mababi, or the Tamalakan. 



In fact, speaking generally, the Cape buffalo was 

 formerly very abundant everywhere throughout 

 South Africa wherever there was a plentiful supply 

 of water and grass in close proximity to shady 

 forests ; for these animals never appear to have 

 frequented open country anywhere to the south of 

 the Zambesi. They spread themselves all down 

 the thickly wooded coast belt of East and South 

 Africa as far as Mossel Bay, and along all the 

 tributaries of the Zambesi and the Limpopo rivers, 

 and it was probably from the headwaters of the 

 Marico and Notwani rivers that they found their 

 way to the Molopo, and thence through Bechwana- 

 land to the Orange river. 



Buffaloes were met with in that district, about 

 1783, by the French traveller Le Yaillant, and in 

 Southern Bechwanaland some five and twenty years 

 later by the missionary John Campbell, whilst in 

 1845 Mr. W. Cotton Oswell still found large herds 

 of these animals living in the reed beds of the 

 Molopo ; but it is worthy of remark that, owing to 

 the gradual desiccation of the country, which has 

 been and still is constantly taking place in South- 

 Western Africa, there is to-day not enough water to 

 support a herd of buffaloes either in the Molopo 



and their disappearance was quickly followed, as has been the case in so many 

 other districts of South Africa, by the dyint; out of the tse-tse tlies. I fear that 

 very few buffaloes can now be left in any part of Northern Mashunaland, since 

 the rinderpest appears to have swept through all that country. 



