GAME AND DISEASE 
311 
same time, I have heard stories to the effect that rinderpest 
came from the Wenyemwezi cattle which were looted from 
the country to the south-east of Lake Victoria. It is possible, 
therefore, that a second source of infection was from the 
west — probably from Egypt. There are some points difficult 
to follow in the way the disease spread. Coming from the 
north, it seems first to have got into the Wakamba cattle, to 
have spread from them through the neighbouring tribes, and 
to have again worked north-west to Laikipia and the country 
to the west. A few isolated spots — such as Mt. Marsabit and 
Mt. Nyiro in the northern frontier district, also some parts of 
the coast, seem to have escaped ; but although these places were 
few and far between, still they helped to re-stock the country. 
It is interesting to note that, in 1893, Arthur Neumann, 
writing of the country near Lake Rudolph, speaks of rinderpest 
as a thing of the past ; while Swayne, writing of Somaliland, 
about the same time, speaks of the numbers of buffalo and 
other game, and never mentions the disease. By this it appears 
as if it did not reach the east of Somaliland till after 1893. 
Travelling south, from Lake Victoria and Kilimanjaro, it 
spread rapidly along the eastern side of Tanganyika ; but 
Nyassaland does not at this time seem to have suffered. 
It apparently passed between Lakes Tanganyika and Nyassa 
into the Angoni country, and from there south, across the 
Zambezi, appearing north of Bulawayo in October 1895. 
By March 1896 the Rhodesian Government had given up all 
hopes of doing anything, and in October or November 1896 
it was in the Eastern Transvaal, where I personally met it, 
and saw the greater kudu wiped out. The same year it 
reached Cape Colony : the pace at which it spread being 
extraordinary, going, in one year, from the Zambezi to the 
Cape — a distance of 1000 miles. In Rhodesia, it had great 
assistance from the transport roads — all the transport at that 
time being by waggon and oxen. This, however, was quickly 
stopped, but without result ; and in March 1896, all hope of 
checking it having been given up, the restrictions were removed 
in order to allow as much food as possible to be brought up 
before all the cattle died. When , in 1 896, the Matabele Rebellion 
took place, the fact that waggon transport had to all intents 
and purposes finished, badly hampered the troops. 
