CHAPTER V 



BUFFALO : ZEBRA : ELAND : SABLE : ROAN 



Passing from consideration of the pachyderms, 

 we now come to the next largest of the great game 

 beasts which may still be found in considerable, 

 I believe in increasing, numbers in various parts 

 of the district of Zambezia. 



The large, powerful, and dangerous animal 

 which has come to be called the " Cape Buffalo " 

 inhabited at one time in immense herds practically 

 the whole of South-East Africa. But since about 

 1896, as the result of an appalling visitation of 

 rinderpest, which swept down the African con- 

 tinent from north to south, this magnificent type, 

 although still far from extinct, exists but as an 

 almost negligible fraction of the vast numbers 

 which formerly roamed over the country. About 

 1894, Cheringoma, the country to the north of the 

 lower course of the Zambezi, as also both sides of 

 the Shire River, — in fact, practically the whole of 

 the plains of Zambezia, — were thickly populated 

 by large herds of buffaloes, which, up to that time, 

 had existed practically undisturbed from, and 

 long before, the earliest days whence European 

 knowledge of the land can be dated. That long- 

 dead Portuguese priest, Frade Joao dos Santos, 

 in a supremely interesting topographical work 



