312 
GAME AND DISEASE 
It has been estimated that in Rhodesia alone 100,000 cattle 
died ; and that to the south, Khama and his people lost 
800,000 head. What the total for Africa must have been is in- 
conceivable ; yet the wonderful recovery shows what a country 
it is for stock-rearing. That great hunter and observer, the late 
F. C. Selous, states that in Rhodesia there was an extraordinary 
absence of vultures, and he attributes it to their having died 
of a surfeit of rinderpest meat in the early stages of the disease. 
This, however, does not appear to have been the case in this 
country. 
Rinderpest in British East Africa. 
My chief informants on the subject are the Masai and 
other stock-owning people, who are naturally more observant 
than the agricultural tribes. 
When rinderpest first reached the country, only the 
cattle suffered ; but it was not long before the disease was 
apparent amongst the then huge herds of buffalo. Eland 
also showed it early ; and subsequently all the game, except 
the gazelle, zebra, elephant, rhino, and hippo, became infected. 
Here an interesting point is to be noted, for the wildebeeste 
was said to be the last animal to become infected, none dying 
until after all the cattle were dead. 
Giraffe, always subject to disease, died in large numbers. 
Those species which suffered worst were buffalo, eland, 
greater kudu, roan, lesser kudu, and bush- buck ; of these, 
all but the greater kudu have made practically complete 
recovery. 
The buffalo, perhaps, showed their losses more than any- 
thing else, for the whole of the animals inhabiting the open 
country vanished : either they were dead, or had taken to the 
bush, where they spread the infection to the bush- buffalo. 
These forest- and bush-loving buffalo were seldom in such 
large herds as the animals of the open, and some of these 
herds appeared to escape, for, when I first began to investigate 
the game of this country in 1901, I found small isolated herds 
here and there. 
During a recent small outbreak of rinderpest amongst the 
buffalo, I have, on visiting the scene of the outbreak, been 
