RECAPITULATION AND CONCLUSION 369 



that I have never been able to understand why 

 it is that so meagre a measure of attention has in 

 the past been devoted to Zambezia. It has come 

 to be regarded, I am afraid, as a kind of unfor- 

 tunate, not very desirable East African waif, and 

 its neglect has been so consistent that the country 

 as a whole is nowadays rarely spoken of except in 

 terms of belittlement and dispraise. Yet those 

 who live there — ^those who know it intimately — 

 have a very different account to give. Its com- 

 mercial capacity is so vast as, of recent years, to 

 have gained for it a small, apparently reluctantly- 

 conceded measure of periunctory attention, and 

 with that attention a half-hearted interest in 

 Zambezian game has slowly raised its anaemic 

 head. That the country to the north of the 

 lower courses of the Zambezi compares favourably 

 with that to the south, which for so many years 

 was regarded as one of the finest shooting grounds 

 in the southern half of East Africa, no longer, to 

 my mind, admits of a doubt ; and as the remoter 

 districts are reached, the numbers of the game 

 beasts are found to be as great as their varieties 

 are interesting. Much of this interior consists, as 

 described in my book Zambezia, of moderately 

 high forested country, from whose irregular un- 

 didations chains of granite mountains at times 

 abruptly spring ; but from the 2jambezi to the 

 Lurio the district is a wonderfully well watered 

 one during the whole year, and the plains forming 

 the lower levels of such river basins as those of the 

 Lugella, Licungo, Ruo, and Shir6 are well worthy 

 of the most careful examination, not so much for 



