288 
AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 
succumbed. Even a buffalo cow, if fairly pitted against a 
single lion, would probably stand an even chance; but of 
course the fight never is fair, the lion’s aim being to take 
his prey unawares and get a death grip at the outset; and 
then, unless his hold is broken, he cannot be seriously 
injured. 
Twenty years ago the African buffalo were smitten 
with one of those overwhelming disasters which are ever 
occurring and recurring in the animal world. Africa is not 
only the land, beyond all others, subject to odious and ter¬ 
rible insect plagues of every conceivable kind, but is also 
peculiarly liable to cattle murrains. About the year 1889, or 
shortly before, a virulent form of rinderpest started among 
the domestic cattle and wild buffalo almost at the northern 
border of the buffalo’s range, and within the next few 
years worked gradually southward to beyond the Zambesi. 
It wrought dreadful havoc among the cattle, and in conse¬ 
quence decimated by starvation many of the cattle-owning 
tribes; it killed many of the large bovine antelopes, and it 
wellnigh exterminated the buffalo. In many places the 
buffalo herds were absolutely wiped out, the species being 
utterly destroyed throughout great tracts of territory, no¬ 
tably in East Africa; in other places the few survivors 
did not represent the hundredth part of those that had 
died. For years the East African buffalo ceased to exist 
as a beast of the chase. But all the time it was slowly 
regaining the lost ground, and during the last decade its 
increase has been rapid. Unlike the slow-breeding ele¬ 
phant and rhinoceros, buffalo multiply apace, like domes¬ 
tic cattle, and in many places the herds have now become 
too numerous. Their rapid recovery from a calamity so 
