The Lands Of Each Chief
Are Very Well Defined, The Boundaries Being Usually Marked By Rivulets,
Great Numbers Of Which
Flow into the Zambesi from both banks,
and, if an elephant is wounded on one man's land and dies on
That of another,
the under half of the carcass is claimed by the lord of the soil;
and so stringent is the law, that the hunter can not begin at once
to cut up his own elephant, but must send notice to the lord of the soil
on which it lies, and wait until that personage sends one authorized
to see a fair partition made. If the hunter should begin to cut up
before the agent of the landowner arrives, he is liable to lose
both the tusks and all the flesh. The hind leg of a buffalo
must also be given to the man on whose land the animal was grazing,
and a still larger quantity of the eland, which here and every where else
in the country is esteemed right royal food. In the country above Zumbo
we did not find a vestige of this law; and but for the fact
that it existed in the country of the Bamapela, far to the south of this,
I should have been disposed to regard it in the same light as I do
the payment for leave to pass - an imposition levied on him
who is seen to be weak because in the hands of his slaves. The only game-laws
in the interior are, that the man who first wounds an animal,
though he has inflicted but a mere scratch, is considered the killer of it;
the second is entitled to a hind quarter, and the third to a fore leg.
The chiefs are generally entitled to a share as tribute; in some parts
it is the breast, in others the whole of the ribs and one fore leg.
I generally respected this law, although exceptions are sometimes made
when animals are killed by guns.
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