350 TSETSEiFLIES 



smallest trace of game, nor recollection of its 

 occurrence among the more elderly of the native 

 inhabitants. 



In 1908 I was ordered to proceed for certain 

 purposes upon an official tour in the division of 

 Africa which I have just mentioned, in the course 

 of which I crossed over on foot from the Indian 

 Ocean at the port of Ibo to the south-eastern 

 corner of Lake Nyasa at a point in British 

 Nyasaland called Fort Maguire. Twice on this 

 journey did my expedition, upon which I was 

 accompanied by the well-known zoologist and 

 authority upon great game, Major J. Stevenson- 

 Hamilton, pass through extensive fly-belts, one 

 of which must have been fully 80 miles in width. 

 It lay between the M'salu and Lujenda rivers, 

 and throughout its extent we were all badly 

 bitten. Arrived at the village of an elderly 

 headman named Che-chequeo in the Yao country, 

 at which the insects still mercilessly annoyed us, 

 he told me that the country through which 

 we had passed since leaving M'salu was known to 

 his people as the " fly country," and had cer- 

 tainly contained no game within his recollection. 

 I had, on this occasion, about eighty men to feed, 

 and, as will be easily understood, I lost no oppor- 

 tunity of obtaining animal food for them ; but 

 throughout this and other fly country through 

 which we passed, where, if there be any point in 

 the contentions of those who advocate game 

 extermination, we should have found the country 

 teeming with animals, we discovered, in spite 

 of our constant searches, neither game nor game 



