This Was A Bitterly Anxious Night;
And Next Morning The Less There Was Of Water, The More Thirsty
The Little Rogues Became.
The idea of their perishing before our eyes
was terrible.
It would almost have been a relief to me
to have been reproached with being the entire cause of the catastrophe;
but not one syllable of upbraiding was uttered by their mother,
though the tearful eye told the agony within. In the afternoon
of the fifth day, to our inexpressible relief, some of the men returned
with a supply of that fluid of which we had never before felt the true value.
The cattle, in rushing along to the water in the Mahabe,
probably crossed a small patch of trees containing tsetse,
an insect which was shortly to become a perfect pest to us.
Shobo had found his way to the Bayeiye, and appeared,
when we came up to the river, at the head of a party; and, as he wished
to show his importance before his friends, he walked up boldly
and commanded our whole cavalcade to stop, and to bring forth
fire and tobacco, while he coolly sat down and smoked his pipe.
It was such an inimitably natural way of showing off, that we all stopped
to admire the acting, and, though he had left us previously in the lurch,
we all liked Shobo, a fine specimen of that wonderful people, the Bushmen.
Next day we came to a village of Banajoa, a tribe which extends
far to the eastward. They were living on the borders of a marsh in which
the Mahabe terminates. They had lost their crop of corn (`Holcus sorghum'),
and now subsisted almost entirely on the root called "tsitla",
a kind of aroidoea, which contains a very large quantity of
sweet-tasted starch. When dried, pounded into meal, and allowed to ferment,
it forms a not unpleasant article of food. The women shave all the hair
off their heads, and seem darker than the Bechuanas. Their huts were built
on poles, and a fire is made beneath by night, in order that the smoke
may drive away the mosquitoes, which abound on the Mababe and Tamunak'le
more than in any other part of the country. The head man of this village,
Majane, seemed a little wanting in ability, but had had wit enough
to promote a younger member of the family to the office. This person,
the most like the ugly negro of the tobacconists' shops I ever saw,
was called Moroa Majane, or son of Majane, and proved an active guide
across the River Sonta, and to the banks of the Chobe,
in the country of Sebituane. We had come through another tsetse district
by night, and at once passed our cattle over to the northern bank
to preserve them from its ravages.
A few remarks on the Tsetse, or `Glossina morsitans', may here be appropriate.
It is not much larger than the common house-fly, and is nearly
of the same brown color as the common honey-bee; the after part of the body
has three or four yellow bars across it; the wings project
beyond this part considerably, and it is remarkably alert,
avoiding most dexterously all attempts to capture it with the hand
at common temperatures; in the cool of the mornings and evenings
it is less agile. Its peculiar buzz when once heard can never be forgotten
by the traveler whose means of locomotion are domestic animals;
for it is well known that the bite of this poisonous insect
is certain death to the ox, horse, and dog. In this journey,
though we were not aware of any great number having at any time
lighted on our cattle, we lost forty-three fine oxen by its bite.
We watched the animals carefully, and believe that not a score of flies
were ever upon them.
A most remarkable feature in the bite of the tsetse is
its perfect harmlessness in man and wild animals, and even calves,
so long as they continue to suck the cows. We never experienced
the slightest injury from them ourselves, personally, although we lived
two months in their HABITAT, which was in this case as sharply defined
as in many others, for the south bank of the Chobe was infested by them,
and the northern bank, where our cattle were placed, only fifty yards distant,
contained not a single specimen. This was the more remarkable,
as we often saw natives carrying over raw meat to the opposite bank
with many tsetse settled upon it.
The poison does not seem to be injected by a sting, or by ova placed
beneath the skin; for, when one is allowed to feed freely on the hand,
it is seen to insert the middle prong of three portions,
into which the proboscis divides, somewhat deeply into the true skin;
it then draws it out a little way, and it assumes a crimson color
as the mandibles come into brisk operation. The previously shrunken belly
swells out, and, if left undisturbed, the fly quietly departs
when it is full. A slight itching irritation follows, but not more
than in the bite of a mosquito. In the ox this same bite produces no more
immediate effects than in man. It does not startle him as the gad-fly does;
but a few days afterward the following symptoms supervene:
the eye and nose begin to run, the coat stares as if the animal were cold,
a swelling appears under the jaw, and sometimes at the navel;
and, though the animal continues to graze, emaciation commences,
accompanied with a peculiar flaccidity of the muscles,
and this proceeds unchecked until, perhaps months afterward,
purging comes on, and the animal, no longer able to graze,
perishes in a state of extreme exhaustion. Those which are in good condition
often perish soon after the bite is inflicted with staggering and blindness,
as if the brain were affected by it. Sudden changes of temperature
produced by falls of rain seem to hasten the progress of the complaint;
but, in general, the emaciation goes on uninterruptedly for months,
and, do what we will, the poor animals perish miserably.
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