BUFFALOES AND CROCODILES 



This all sounds like a tale of by-gone times. Yet the 

 pest not only almost exterminated the buffalo, but it 

 also destroyed the prosperity of the cattle -raising Masai 

 tribes, and decimated their numbers by the famine which 

 accompanied it. Often I found heaps of bones of cattle, 

 and mixed up with them human skulls. They marked 

 the camps of the Masai in i8go. 



There are but remnants left of the once numerous 

 and rich Masai nation. During the famine the men 

 sold many women and children as slaves to their agri- 

 cultural neighbors in exchange for food. 



But few buffaloes are left in German and Enghsh East 

 Africa, as I had occasion to find out for myself on my ex- 

 peditions through the Masai-Nyika, the immense steppe. 

 A few herds I found in the swamps of the Pangani 

 River, another near Manjara Lake; a few I sighted on 

 the high plateau of Mau, nine thousand feet above the 

 sea; a few also near the Ndjiri swamps. And even 

 this small number, thinly spread over so large an area, 

 is daily reduced by conscienceless European hunters 

 and native soldiers— the Askari— of the colonial troops,- 

 in spite of all the precautions the colonial governments 

 have taken, and in spite of all the ordinances they 

 have issued for the protection and preservation of the 

 almost extinct animal. 



How long will it be— or, rather, how soon will it be — 

 before the East African buffalo will be among the ex- 

 tinct animals, extinct by the hand of man? 



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