ABUSES 357 



then at the head of the African Department of 

 the Foreign Office, much has been done to put a 

 period to the indiscriminate and wanton slaughter 

 whose recital, in books printed as a rule by 

 " sportsmen " thirsting for notoriety, had at last 

 aroused public deprecation in England. 



About that time the slaughter of game, un- 

 checked by anything in the nature of properly 

 framed and enforced regulations, proceeded at a 

 rate which entirely denuded immense and formerly 

 populous areas, leaving them in the bare, desolate 

 condition of so many hundreds of thousands of 

 square miles of monotonous, shot-out country 

 over which the South African train-traveller gazes 

 from his carriage window to-day. 



The International Convention came just in 

 time to save the game of Zambezia, and other 

 portions of Portuguese East Africa as well. Up 

 to that time no steps had been taken. For a 

 ludicrously small sum the slaughterer might — 

 and usually did — ^wade through seas of un- 

 necessarily spilled blood. In 1898, during a 

 short tour of duty at the British Consulate at 

 Beira, the district behind which small port was 

 at that time one in which good shooting was ob- 

 tainable, I heard of cases of butchery which often 

 aroused my indignation, and cases not always 

 perpetrated by the ignorant or irresponsible. 

 One instance of scandalous abuse has always 

 clung to my memory as possibly the worst to 

 come to my knowledge. This was committed by 

 a hunting party from one of the South African 

 towns who visited the district about that time. 

 24 



