WILD GAME IN ZAMBEZIA 



CHAPTER I 



INTRODUCTORY 



It may be taken as a melancholy but undoubted 

 fact that, with the exception of a few remote 

 and restricted areas, there are no portions of 

 the southern half of the African continent con- 

 taining anything like those vast quantities of 

 game which more than fifty years ago moved 

 one of the greatest of African hunters to write 

 that " the multitude of living creatures, at 

 certain seasons and localities, surpassed the 

 bounds of imagination." The Cape Province, 

 Natal, the Orange Free State, Bechuanaland, 

 and many other immense expanses of country are 

 almost denuded of wild game, whilst over wide 

 portions of Rhodesia, we are told, its destruction 

 has been permitted to an extent which seems 

 to border dangerously on recklessness. 



Even in the formerly populous game districts 

 of Mashonaland and Matabeleland the herds are 

 retiring and growing scarcer year by year — 

 seeking sanctuary, as it were, in remoter fast- 

 nesses, from the daily encroaching advance of 

 civilisation, of high-velocity rifles, and copper- 

 capped bullets. Assuredly if there was ever a 



