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The merchants also made a present, by public subscription, of handsome specimens of all their articles of trade, and two donkeys, for the purpose of introducing the breed into his country, as tsetse can not kill this beast of burden.
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.
The course is, however, remarkably straight among the rocks; and here the river is shallow, on account of the great breadth of surface which it covers. When we came to about 16d 16' S. latitude, the high wooded banks seemed to leave the river, and no more tsetse appeared.
It would not be surprising, though they know nothing of the circumstance; a tribe on the Zambesi, which I encountered, whose country was swarming with tsetse, believed that they could not keep any cattle, because "no one loved them well enough to give them the medicine of oxen;" and even the Portuguese at Loanda accounted for the death of the cattle brought from the interior to the sea-coast by the prejudicial influence of the sea air!
As the people of this village had traded with Robertson at Strathmuir, we had no difficulty in obtaining other canoes from them in which to cross the Zambesi in return for one of our oxen that I could see was already sickening from tsetse bite.
In his leisure hours he collected natural history specimens, which he sent home, studied the poisonous tsetse fly and the deadly fever, and was always searching for remedies. He was never idle.
An intelligent young English doctor is conducting the investigations and great hopes are entertained of much new information about that most mysterious ailment that has swept whole colonies of blacks away in the last few years. In many little bottles were specimens of the deadly tsetse fly that causes all the infection.
When we left the Loangwa we thought we had got rid of the hills; but there are some behind Mazanzwe, though five or six miles off from the river. Tsetse and the hills had destroyed two riding oxen, and when the little one that I now rode knocked up, I was forced to march on foot.
Next day we returned in canoes across the flooded lands, and found that, in our absence, the men had allowed the cattle to wander into a very small patch of wood to the west containing the tsetse; this carelessness cost me ten fine large oxen. After remaining a few days, some of the head men of the Makololo came down from Linyanti, with a large party of Barotse, to take us across the river.
We soon passed through the tsetse district, which was not more than a couple of miles wide, and, as our animals showed no appearance of suffering, we hoped that they had escaped injury. We had determined to encamp early in the day near a pool fed by a rivulet which fell into the main stream, in order that we might shoot some game for our supper.
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