102 Great and Small Game of Africa 



The Cape Buffalo (Bos coffer typicus) 



Buffel of the Cape Dutch ; Inyati of the Matabele and Zulus ; 

 Nari of Bechuanas and Basutos 



The requirements of the Cape buffalo are an abundant supply of water, 

 plentiful pasturage of grass or reeds, and forest or jungle in the near 

 neighbourhood of their grazing-grounds, in which they can find shelter 

 from the heat of the sun. Thus the parched karroos of the western 

 province of the Cape Colony, as well as the open treeless downs of the 

 Orange Free State and a large portion of the Transvaal, must always have 

 been unsuited to their habits, and in these parts of the country they were 

 probably never found ; nor is there any part of the Kalahari Desert or 

 Bechuanaland where water is sufficiently plentiful at the present day 

 to satisfy the wants of the African buffalo, except perhaps in the 

 immediate neighbourhood of a few reed- beds on the Upper Molapo, 

 where large herds of buffaloes were encountered by Cornwallis Harris, 

 but where there is now much less water than there used to be sixty years 

 ago. In the early part of this century buffaloes were met with in Southern 

 Bechuanaland by Campbell and other travellers, at places where, owing to 

 the gradual desiccation of the whole of South-West Africa, buffaloes could 

 not exist to-day, as there is not now sufficient water for their requirements. 

 There is no reason why buffaloes should not have existed along the course 

 of the Vaal River, but I do not know that there is any record of their 

 having been met with in that district. 



Fifty years' contact with civilised man and savages armed with the 

 weapons of civilised man — say the half- century which ended with the 

 birth of the year 1896 — had sadly reduced the range of the Cape buffalo. 

 But yet, even at that date, these fine animals were still numerous over a 

 large area of country in South-Eastern Africa between the Limpopo and 



