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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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20 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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Kavirondo and Wakamba; and, as gun-bearers, Somalis and a few Swahili and Wakamba. The settlers employ principally Kikuyu and Kavirondo as agricultural labourers, and a few Masai as herd boys. The explanation of this is that the Wan- yamwezi are by far the best porters obtainable; they will seldom accept other employ- iment; in fact, they are professional shooting-party porters. Also they eat meat readily as well as meal. On the other hand, the Kikuyu porters are the worst possible; they cannot carry such heavy loads, or march so far as the Wanyamwezi, and they are constantly breaking down and giving trouble during a journey, which the Wanyamwezi never do. Moreover, a Kikuyu will rarely eat meat, but he is the best agricultural labourer.

These facts are corroborated by the " scale of allowances to officers of the East Africa Protectorate for local travelling " laid down by Government, of which a copy is attached. It will be seen from this scale that the different capacity of porters is officially recognised.

9. Captain Warwick suggests that the Government should "fix a standard wage, engage boys themselves for strangers, and have them paid by an official at the expiration of the expedition." I must point out that the Government have "fixed a standard wage," not compulsory for the public, but recognised by all the agents who cater for shooting parties; and after making enquiries I have failed to find a single case where the agents have exceeded this standard, and even to the best Wanyamwezi porters the maximum wage is Rs. 10 per month. The question of personal boys, cooks, and gun-bearers is more complicated, and their wages depend upon their accomplishments; those able to speak English are in greater demand, and conse- quently command higher wages, to which they are quite entitled; Somali gun-bearers are the best, and, of course, the most expensive, Rs. 75 to Rs. 80 per month being the usual wage of the best Somalis. It must be also remembered that some sportsmen are more exigent than others, and it is, therefore, on the whole, quite impossible, and would be unjust, to lay down a fixed wage for all cooks, personal boys, and gun- bearers, and the Government could not supply these at lower prices than the agents, whose terms are necessarily kept down by competition.

10. With reference to the suggestion that payments should be made by an official at the end of an expedition, I would point out that this procedure is invari- ably followed by the agents, but it is not unreasonable that boys, who, after all, are only human, should, during an expedition of several months, ask for a small portion of their wages for personal use. Such details as these are usually managed by the guides or white hunters, who are generally engaged by sportsmen to organise and manage their caravans for them, and it is only in cases like Captain Warwick's— where the visiting sportsman is either unwilling or unable to afford the luxury of employing an agent that the trouble arises with the servants. For it is obvious that the agents must have quite as much, perhaps even more, control over the natives they employ than Government can have.

11. From an administrative point of view, the shooting parties who manage their own affairs and do not employ the local agents, are to be strongly discouraged, for they are the ones who most frequently break the Game Regulations, and they generally cause trouble in the outlying districts.

12. The Government intend to register white guides and gun-bearers in future, and although this is for the protection of game, and not for the convenience of sports- men, nevertheless it is anticipated that the practice will be of great advantage to those who are ready to abide by the regulations.

13. With reference to (b) on page 3 of Captain Warwick's letter-if" strangers would gladly sign a paper of non-responsibility" as he rashly states, surely such a document would cancel the advantages which he claims for his suggestions.

With reference to (c), I believe Captain Warwick visited this Protectorate in 1907, so that some effects should now be noticeable in the "falling off of licences due to sportsmen going elsewhere." In actual fact the numbers of shooting parties which visit the Protectorate have greatly increased, and are quite as numerous as is desir- able; while there has been an increase in the receipts from licences of nearly £2,000 each year. These facts do not impress me with any regard for Captain Warwick's pessimistic warnings.

With reference to (d), the Government have no fear of such a day, and can confidently reassure Captain Warwick that they are completely masters of the situ- ation.

14. It is certainly very unpleasant for Captain Warwick that his boys dislike

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him so much, and most unfortunate that he is unable to control them, because in making these complaints about native servants in British East Africa Captain Warwick is only condemning himself. These are not, as a rule, the experiences or opinions of sportsmen who come to shoot in this Protectorate. I have never heard of complaints of this nature before, and the statement that sportsmen cannot visit the country on account of the bad, expensive servants is quite without founda- tion. Natives are very quick at reading characters, and some people always have trouble with their boys, usually through their own mismanagement. We have our own troubles with labour questions in British East Africa, but they are rarely genuine. When a farmer complains that he cannot obtain or keep boys, while he is surrounded by others who do not experience this difficulty, the case is suspicious.

15. Captain Warwick says: "It does not appear advisable to permit a small ' game reserve to increase too much in quantity, &c." Possibly he is confusing this Protectorate with some other country. There are no small game reserves in British The Southern Reserve East Africa, unless private farms are included in the term.

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has an area of 10,695 square miles, and the area of the Northern Reserve was originally 38,300 square miles, but has now been reduced to 25,000 square miles; and although Captain Warwick's remarks with regard to disease hold good for zoologi- cal gardens and deer parks, they are totally inapplicable to the areas mentioned above. In these reserves there is no question that diseases will break out on account of over-crowding. These areas are far too large for game to increase beyond the point allowed by Nature, for the ruthless law of the survival of the fittest is here enforced without mercy.

16. Captain Warwick does not appear to be familiar with the histories and means of transmission of the various diseases by which farmers are troubled in this Protectorate and in other parts of Africa. Rinderpest, the most serious, and of which the pathogenic micro-organism is ultra-microscopical, was almost certainly introduced into Northern Africa with transport animals, and gradually swept south. And although game suffer from rinderpest it is not a disease liable to break out spontaneously in a game reserve through over-crowding.

Gastro-enteritis, a closely allied disease, but having a visible pathogenic micro- organism, has done much damage to domestic cattle, but the pathogenic micro- organism has so far not been found in any of the game animals supposed to have died of this disease, and which have been microscopically examined by the Veterinary Pathologist. Attempts artificially to infect game animals with gastro-enteritis by grazing them on contaminated ground have also proved negative, but this latter experiment has not been carried out on a sufficiently large scale to be absolutely conclusive. Experiments are also being made to ascertain if it is possible to infect game animals with gastro-enteritis by inoculation. Of the piroplasmoses, the most serious is East Coast fever, but in this case the game, instead of spreading the disease, is, in fact, a great disinfecting agent, for an infected tick is rendered clean by biting a game animal. Zebras have been proved to carry in their blood the patho- genic micro-organism of biliary fever of horses (Piroplasma equi), and a reduction in their numbers will be welcomed in settled areas, but this disease is not at all a serious factor in the development of the country, and on the whole it is unjustifiable and premature to condemn the game and assume that game reserves are equivalent to potential reservoirs of disease. It is of interest to note that during the last few years of drought, when the game has suffered a good deal from disease, that the game inside the reserves has suffered far less than that outside.

17. With regard to Captain Warwick's suggestion that “ reserves should be changed continually," I must point out that this question was discussed by the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire, when it was decided that a game reserve should be an absolute sanctum and should be permanent, because it is the object of such a reserve to prevent the extermination not only of any game animals, but also of all other animals which go to make up the fauna of that part of Africa. This may be taken as representing the opinions of British naturalists and sportsmen. If a reserve such as the present Southern Masai and Game Reserve were thrown open to shooting, as Captain Warwick suggests, the rarer animals, such as greater kudu, roan antelope, and rhinoceros, would be exterminated. It is my opinion that the rhinoceros will be absolutely exterminated outside the game reserves within the next 50 years. The proper method of dealing with valuable shooting grounds is to close a certain district to shooting for a time to allow recuperation. This matter has been fully dealt with in my annual report for 1910-11.

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