When Opened, The Cellular Tissue On The Surface Of The Body Beneath The Skin
Is Seen To Be Injected With Air, As If A Quantity Of Soap-Bubbles Were
Scattered Over It, Or A Dishonest, Awkward Butcher Had Been Trying To Make It
Look Fat.
The fat is of a greenish-yellow color and of an oily consistence.
All the muscles are flabby, and the heart often so soft that the fingers
may be made to meet through it.
The lungs and liver partake of the disease.
The stomach and bowels are pale and empty, and the gall-bladder is distended
with bile.
These symptoms seem to indicate what is probably the case,
a poison in the blood, the germ of which enters when the proboscis
is inserted to draw blood. The poison-germ, contained in a bulb
at the root of the proboscis, seems capable, although very minute in quantity,
of reproducing itself, for the blood after death by tsetse
is very small in quantity, and scarcely stains the hands in dissection.
I shall have by-and-by to mention another insect, which by the same operation
produces in the human subject both vomiting and purging.
The mule, ass, and goat enjoy the same immunity from the tsetse
as man and the game. Many large tribes on the Zambesi can keep
no domestic animals except the goat, in consequence of the scourge
existing in their country. Our children were frequently bitten,
yet suffered no harm; and we saw around us numbers of zebras,
buffaloes, pigs, pallahs and other antelopes, feeding quietly
in the very habitat of the tsetse, yet as undisturbed by its bite as oxen are
when they first receive the fatal poison. There is not so much difference
in the natures of the horse and zebra, the buffalo and ox,
the sheep and antelope, as to afford any satisfactory explanation
of the phenomenon. Is a man not as much a domestic animal as a dog?
The curious feature in the case, that dogs perish though fed on milk,
whereas the calves escape so long as they continue sucking,
made us imagine that the mischief might be produced by some plant
in the locality, and not by tsetse; but Major Vardon, of the Madras Army,
settled that point by riding a horse up to a small hill infested by the insect
without allowing him time to graze, and, though he only remained long enough
to take a view of the country and catch some specimens of tsetse
on the animal, in ten days afterward the horse was dead.
The well-known disgust which the tsetse shows to animal excreta,
as exhibited when a village is placed in its habitat,
has been observed and turned to account by some of the doctors.
They mix droppings of animals, human milk, and some medicines together,
and smear the animals that are about to pass through a tsetse district;
but this, though it proves a preventive at the time, is not permanent.
There is no cure yet known for the disease. A careless herdsman
allowing a large number of cattle to wander into a tsetse district
loses all except the calves; and Sebituane once lost
nearly the entire cattle of his tribe, very many thousands, by unwittingly
coming under its influence. Inoculation does not insure immunity,
as animals which have been slightly bitten in one year may perish
by a greater number of bites in the next; but it is probable
that with the increase of guns the game will perish, as has happened
in the south, and the tsetse, deprived of food, may become extinct
simultaneously with the larger animals.
The Makololo whom we met on the Chobe were delighted to see us;
and as their chief Sebituane was about twenty miles down the river,
Mr. Oswell and I proceeded in canoes to his temporary residence.
He had come from the Barotse town of Naliele down to Sesheke
as soon as he heard of white men being in search of him,
and now came one hundred miles more to bid us welcome into his country.
He was upon an island, with all his principal men around him,
and engaged in singing when we arrived. It was more like church music
than the sing-song ee ee ee, ae ae ae, of the Bechuanas of the south,
and they continued the tune for some seconds after we approached.
We informed him of the difficulties we had encountered, and how glad we were
that they were all at an end by at last reaching his presence.
He signified his own joy, and added, "Your cattle are all bitten
by the tsetse, and will certainly die; but never mind, I have oxen,
and will give you as many as you need." We, in our ignorance, then thought
that as so few tsetse had bitten them no great mischief would follow.
He then presented us with an ox and a jar of honey as food, and handed us over
to the care of Mahale, who had headed the party to Kolobeng,
and would now fain appropriate to himself the whole credit of our coming.
Prepared skins of oxen, as soft as cloth, were given to cover us
through the night; and, as nothing could be returned to this chief,
Mahale became the owner of them. Long before it was day Sebituane came,
and sitting down by the fire, which was lighted for our benefit
behind the hedge where we lay, he narrated the difficulties
he had himself experienced, when a young man, in crossing that same desert
which we had mastered long afterward. As he has been most remarkable
in his career, and was unquestionably the greatest man in all that country,
a short sketch of his life may prove interesting to the reader.
Sebituane was about forty-five years of age; of a tall and wiry form,
an olive or coffee-and-milk color, and slightly bald; in manner
cool and collected, and more frank in his answers than any other chief
I ever met.
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