Identifier: rooseveltsafrica01unge (find matches)
Title: Roosevelt's African trip; the story of his life, the voyage from New York to Mombasa, and the route through the heart of Africa, including the big game and other ferocious animals ... found in the course of his travels
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Unger, Frederic William, 1875-
Subjects: Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919 Game and game-birds
Publisher: (Philadelphia? Pa.)
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

View Book Page: Book Viewer
About This Book: Catalog Entry
View All Images: All Images From Book
Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book.

Text Appearing Before Image:
, from South Africa, has crane-like legs, about three feet long, and slate-gray plumage, marked* with black, derives its name from its erectile crest, which the early Dutch settlers compared to pens stuck behind the ear of a clerk. It is extremely serviceable in destroying snakes, which constitute its principal food. It is often tamed and kept in poultry yards, but it has a bad habit of snapping up young chickens; and there is a story that the where-abouts of a missing kitten was discovered by hearing a faint mew as the pet secretary bird stalked to and fro, looking as innocent as if it knew nothing at all about the matter. CHAPTER XXIX Poisonous Insects THE Insect World makes itself known very quickly upon the travelers arrival in Africa, and from that moment until the last of the Dark Continent sinks below the horizon on the return journey he is never allowed to forget the insects and the perils they carry with them like loaded bombs. The Tsetse-fly.—Most prominent and deadly of all African
Text Appearing After Image:
THE PREY OF THE TSETSE-FLY C«83) 284 POISONOUS INSECTS insects is the dread tsetse-fly. This insect resembles a large horsefly, and is death to horses and some other varieties of stock. In fact, it is impossible to use cattle, horses or dogs in. the badly infested districts. But the ravages of the tsetse-fly do not stop here, bad as they are. It is known as the Glossina palpalis to the naturalist and as the bearer of the dread sleeping disease. Carrying this deadly sickness from one person to another by means of its bite, it is responsible for the deaths of more than a hundred thousand natives in Uganda alone, and even Europeans cannot consider themselves immune. The disease is confined to the fly-infested belts, which extend over wide areas. In the interior of Usoga, on the banks of many rivers, in swamps on the shores of numerous lakes, great swarms of these emissaries of death are to be found. One person afflicted with the disease can in this way communicate it to countless thousands. Whole v

Note About Images