296 ON SAFAKI 



places. With these efforts and those tears I have scant 

 sympathy. What is wanted is something more practical 

 than tears — the energy to wake up while yet there is 

 time, to assure the safety and well-being of those 

 faunas that still survive, and to render any repetition 

 of such barbarities impossible, at least on British soiL 



Practical measures, plus the power to enforce them, 

 are the one essential ; and these must be taken in 

 advance. Doctors avail not when the patient is dead. 



In British East Africa, along with our highland 

 domain, we have succeeded to a faunal inheritance that 

 is second to none now surviving on earth. ^ That splendid 

 asset it is nothing less than our duty to hand down 

 unimpaired and unencumbered to future generations — 

 subject always, it goes without saying, to the necessities 

 of white settlement and colonisation. 



At the moment no very serious danger threatens. 

 The Game-ordinances of the Protectorate are essentially 

 practical, and the one weak point — a shortage in the 

 power to enforce them — is being remedied. These 

 ordinances, it is pertinent to point out, were drawn in 

 the first instance (and amended as circumstances dic- 

 tated) by men who, better than any other, understood the 

 necessities of the Colony ; first, of course, in relation to 

 its white population, while yet in sympathy with the 

 aborigines — whether wild beasts or savage men. 



The chief danger to big game in all lands and at all 

 times has been the use of the horse. Eidina;-dowu g-ame 

 and then shooting at random into flying herds is the 

 worst of all barbarisms — to say nothing of its being the 

 most wasteful. My own experience demonstrates that 

 for each head of game killed by this method, an average 

 of five or six others escaped wounded, to die uselessly on 

 the veld. 



That combination of horse-and-rifle together I utterly 

 condemn. It is unsportsmanlike, since not one man in 

 a hundred can be trusted (or can trust himself) to act 



^ It is equalled, nevertheless, in British Central Africa — in 

 Barotseland, Nyassaland and Northern Rhodesia. 



