138 After Big Game in Central Africa 



in a dry country and when the wind is high, not a 

 moment is to be lost, especially if the grass stretches 

 a long distance in all directions. We have several 

 times found ourselves in this situation, and it has 

 needed all the care of which we were capable not to 

 suffer from the scourge. Whenever you hear the 

 fire and you can hear it a long way off you have 

 only, if you are on its probable path, to set fire to 

 the grass to leeward, tracing a line stretching to right 

 and left. The flames start thence and move 

 away from you, since they cannot spread against 

 the wind, thus clearing a space where you must 

 hasten to take up a position as far away as possible 

 from the edge of the grass still unburnt. When 

 the great conflagration arrives it naturally stops 

 short where you began yours. 



Quantities of buchangas, birds as black as the 

 smoke in which they fly, follow the fires, catching 

 on the wing the grasshoppers and insects which the 

 flames arouse on their path. 



Warned of the approach of the scourge by scent, 

 before they are able even to hear it, animals leave 

 the dangerous zone either by fleeing before the fire, 

 or by escaping to the right or to the left. 



Once the flames are passed, the country has as- 

 sumed a different aspect : the yellow grass has dis- 

 appeared ; the trunks of trees freed from vegetation 

 seem to have become longer ; leaves scorched, 

 twisted by the flames and scattered behind them 

 strew the ground, and the eye can stretch far into the 

 distance in every direction over a black carpet which 



