FREEDOM FROM MOSQUITOES 159 



due to the conditions of climate, their inclusion 

 among the centres wherein Europeans may make a 

 permanent home may be never wholly possible ; 

 and, therefore, they will remain throughout the 

 centuries abiding examples of our puny impotence 

 in the face of tropical Africa's impassable re- 

 strictions. 



There is one thing regarding which the Baru^ 

 has my whole-hearted felicitations. From the 

 moment I entered its wide expanse to that at 

 which I left it, I never once heard the hateful hum 

 of the misbegotten mosquito, that veritable curse 

 of almost every portion of Central and South 

 Central Africa. It is, I suppose, too high, and 

 there is scarcely any surface water in which this 

 ill-devised creature can propagate its devilish 

 species. 



Since the military operations which, in 1902, 

 swept the bulk of the native population across the 

 border into South-Eastern Rhodesia, this vast 

 district has been administered so far as possible by 

 miUtary authorities. It was at one time proposed 

 that the Mozambique Company should be per- 

 mitted to undertake its governance, but difficulties 

 presented themselves which that body did not see 

 its way to surmount. Still, even with the slender 

 resources placed at his disposal, Captain Lage, the 

 Capitao-m(5r of the Baru^, has laboured devotedly 

 to bring the district into line with adjoining areas, 

 and the roads which now render travelling easy 

 and pleasant, and even some of the bridges, are 

 quite equal, and in some cases superior, to those 

 found in the adjoining Mozambique Company's 



