Note 8 — Chapter VIII

I have lately learned that the route followed by cattle which are now frequently brought from N.E. Rhodesia to Salisbury, in Mashunaland, is down the valley of the Loangwa river to the Zambesi, and after that river has been crossed up the course of the Panyami to Salisbury. In 1882, and again in 1887, I found buffaloes very numerous all along the Panyami river from the Zambesi to a point only a few miles north of Lo Magondi's, and wherever the buffaloes were found, tse-tse flies were also very numerous. There can be no tse-tse flies along the Panyami to-day, if I have been correctly informed that cattle are brought to Mashunaland by this route, and there can be no buffaloes there either, or the tse-tse flies would not have disappeared. No doubt the buffaloes were destroyed by the epidemic of rinderpest in 1896-97, and their disappearance was quickly followed, as has been the case in so many other districts of South Africa, by the dying out of the tse-tse flies. I fear that very few buffaloes can now be left in any part of Northern Mashunaland, since the rinderpest appears to have swept through all that country.