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From the hill N'gwa a ridge of higher land runs to the northeast, and bounds its course in that direction. We, being ignorant of this, were in the valley, and the only gap in the whole country destitute of tsetse. In company with the Bushmen I explored all the banks of the Sanshureh to the west till we came into tsetse on that side.
Benedict, what is this fly?" "This fly," replied the entomologist, "this fly that I hold between my fingers, this fly it is a tsetse! It is that famous dipter that is the honor of a country, and, till now, no one has ever found a tsetse in America!" Dick Sand did not dare to ask Cousin Benedict in what part of the world this redoubtable tsetse was only to be met.
We were obliged to hurry along, for the oxen were bitten daily by the tsetse, which, as I have before remarked, now inhabits extensive tracts which once supported herds of cattle that were swept off by Mpakane and other marauders, whose devastations were well known to Sekwebu, for he himself had been an actor in the scenes.
Another objection to traveling on either bank of the river was the prevalence of the tsetse, which is so abundant that the inhabitants can keep no domestic animals except goats. While pondering over these different paths, I could not help regretting my being alone. If I had enjoyed the company of my former companion, Mr.
Such exceptional provisions are not without precedent in the animal oeconomy: the hornbill feeds with impunity on the deadly fruit of the strychnos; the milky juice of some species of euphorbia, which is harmless to oxen, is invariably fatal to the zebra; and the tsetse fly, the pest of South Africa, whose bite is mortal to the ox, the dog, and the horse, is harmless to man and the untamed creatures of the forest.
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.
Flies and mosquitoes, the great Indian pests, are scarcely known, and the tsetse of the south nowhere exists.
"For," said he, "cattle, and men too, die in spite of medicine; but should a herd by accident stray into a tsetse district and be bitten, by this medicine of my father, Kampa-kampa, some of them could be saved, while, without it, all would inevitably die."
One species, with leaves having finely serrated edges, and of a reddish-brown colour, we noticed our men eating: it tastes exactly like liquorice-root, and is named kezu- kezu. The tsetse, known to the Batoka by the name "ndoka," does not exist here, though buffaloes and elephants abound.
This insect the 'Glossina moritans' of the naturalists deserves a special paragraph. It is a brown insect about as large as our common house-fly, with three or four yellow bars across its hinder part. A lively, buzzing, harmless-looking fellow is the tsetse.
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