ix LAST VISIT TO LO BENGULA 163 



tse-tse flies, which must soon have increased and 

 multiplied in so favourable an environment. 



In 1873 I was hunting elephants at the junction 

 of the Gwai and Shangani rivers, and through all 

 the country westwards to beyond the site of the 

 present coal-mine at Wankies. At that time all 

 this country was full of buffaloes and tse-tse flies. 



Fifteen years later, however, the Matabele, who 

 had then for a long time been in the possession of 

 firearms, had driven the buffaloes out of all the 

 country on either side of the river Gwai, and as 

 these animals went farther north and east, the tse- 

 tse fly gradually disappeared. 



The last time I saw Lo Bengula alive early in 

 1890 I spent the greater part of two days talking 

 to him on many subjects, especially game, for he 

 loved to talk about wild animals, having been a 

 great hunter in his youth. He told me that there 

 were then no more buffaloes anywhere in the 

 neighbourhood of the Gwai and Shangani rivers, 

 and that with the buffaloes the "fly" had gone too, 

 and that as the buffaloes and the " fly " had died 

 out, he had gradually pushed his cattle posts down 

 both the Gwai and Shangani rivers, and that at 

 that time, 1890, he had actually got a cattle post 

 at the junction of the two rivers, where seventeen 

 years before I had found buffaloes and tse-tse flies 

 both very numerous. 



The history of the country lying between the 

 lower course of the Chobi river and the Zambesi 

 has been very similar to that of the territory to the 

 south of the Zambesi between the Gwai and the 

 Dak a. 



When Livingstone and Oswell visited the chief 

 Sebitwane in 1853, they first took their waggon 

 during the night through the narrow strip of " fly " 

 infested country which ran along the southern bank 

 of the Chobi, and swam their bullocks to the other 



