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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.
This was a barrier we never expected to meet; and, as it might have brought our wagons to a complete stand-still in a wilderness, where no supplies for the children could be obtained, we were reluctantly compelled to recross the Zouga. * 'Glossina morsitans', the first specimens of which were brought to England in 1848 by my friend Major Vardon, from the banks of the Limpopo.
At one place there is a belt thirty miles wide, and our progress was perpetual torture, unless we passed that way at night. For the Glossina morsitans sleeps by night beneath leaves in the bush, and only wakes when disturbed. For this reason we drive our horses, mules, and cattle by night through these fly-belts.
Thus one cannot have domestic cattle and wild game in the same area; the two are incompatible. And shortly the time will come, as certainly as this land will support a white population, when the wild game will be exterminated and Glossina morsitans will bite no more. More troublesome, because more widely spread, are the large family of mosquitoes.
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