358 ABUSES 



These men were said to have boasted on their 

 return to Beira of having shot in one month over 

 600 head of wild animals, or an average of more 

 than twenty a day. The professional hunter who 

 accompanied them, and who informed me of what 

 had taken place, was moved at length to re- 

 monstrance when he saw two of these creatures 

 actually shoot eleven brindled gnu in one morning, 

 leaving their carcases untouched, and lying upon 

 the plain, a prey for the hyena and the vulture. 



In the Nyasaland Protectorate, somewhere 

 about 1894, great amusement was created by the 

 originality of a certain naval officer who was said, 

 I believe with truth, to have taken his blue- 

 jackets ashore and concluded their annual mus- 

 ketry course, with satisfactory results, by volley- 

 firing at long ranges at a target formed by the 

 large herds of buffaloes which at that time 

 occurred upon the banks of both the Zambezi and 

 the Shire Rivers. Generally speaking, the whole 

 wretched business was looked upon as a great 

 joke, and never a thought went out to the numbers 

 of innocent creatures, immature calves and cows 

 heavy with young, dragging out the miserable 

 remnant of their pain-racked days in the agony 

 induced at every movement by their festering 

 wounds and shattered limbs. 



Then take the bloodthirsty " biltong " brig- 

 ands, and the hunters of meat for sale. The 

 Beira and Mashonaland Railway in 1898, and for 

 several years before, ran through a country be- 

 tween the sea and the mountains of the Southern 

 Rhodesian border which was full of game, and 



