... In the afternoon, the Chairman of the Tanganyika National Parks, Mr. Hunter, took us up in his small plane and flew us right over the Serengeti Plain.

I was sorry not to see any elephant or Rhino on this trip. The rhinos are being killed by the Masai at an alarming rate, always, they say, in self-defence. Phersen reported the year's total of killed Rhino - found minus horns by his scouts - at thirty-six. This year there are six or eight pairs left in the crater. Next year there may be fewer.

[to Seronera] We drove on to the warden's house. Mrs. Harver [sic] received us, and took us straight to the guest-house for a welcome bath.

[in Uganda] one of the visitors from over the frontier was a young American called George Schaller. Twenty-four years old, he had just spent two years in close intimacy with the mountain gorilla, in spite of all the rumours of these animals fierce intolerance of man.

The postscript to our journey was the Arusha Conference held in Tanganyika in the September of the following year. The Conference on the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in Modern African States, to give it its full title, was the first international conference on wild life conservation to be held in Africa. Its high point was the Arusha Declaration.

At Arusha we were met by the new Director of National Parks in Tanganyika, John Owen, our guide all the time we were in Tanganyika.

Arusha itself with its cosy individual character, is unlike any other town I have seen in Africa. It was built by the Germans when they owned the province; they also built the road leading out of town, on which we met many Masai marching proudly and arrogantly with an accomplished feline grace.

....

To begin with, John Owen took us up to the Ngordoto Crater, a very recently created National Park, only an hour�s drive from Arusha.

... [after a visit to Lake Manyara]

The Land-Rover lurched and plunged on the broken track, roared its way through torrents whose rush seems to have doubled in noise and intensity. I began to wonder how I should like to spend a night here with a breakdown, in this forest which now assumed a sombre and malevolent power.

We emerged after what seemed like an eternity, and with some relief returned to our perch on the rim; [the brand new Hotel Manyara] to a bath of kipper smelling water, a drink at the smart bar and a tranquil evening by the welcome fire. The young warden, Max Morgan Davies, joined us for dinner. ..

... [at Ngorongoro crater] Mr Phersen the district officer was putting us up.

... [to Seronera] We drove on to the warden�s house. Mrs. Harver received us, and took us straight to the guest-house for a welcome bath.

... In the afternoon, the Chairman of the Tanganyika National Parks, Mr. Hunter, took us up in his small plane and flew us right over the Serengeti Plain.

... [Next stop Dar-es-Salaam.] The pilot of the small charter plane accommodatingly took us right over the splendid grey ash cone of Ol Doinyo Lengai, the Masai�s Mountain of the Gods, a still sub-active volcano, puffing out clouds of sulphuric gases. A minute later we looked down into its neighbour the Embegi volcano, now extinct, its forested crater containing a lake. Clouds of flamingos were whirling like pink snow below us, shimmering against the blue water. The sides were very steep, their ravines thick with ancient forests. Such an intimate view of this farouche lonely giant could never have been achieved in any other way.

Part of our time [at the Arusha Conference] was devoted to finding out whether the terrible drought of 1961 was the final culmination of a long destructive process of habitat damage by the Masai, or a recurrent phenomenon of the Tanganyika climate. Both conclusions it appeared, were true. Eventually one elder recalled that the streams had failed once before in tribal memory, about forty-five years ago. On the other hand Professor Pearsall soon made it clear that there had also been a serious deterioration of the habitat.

I should recall that in 1956, as a result of the Tanganyika Government's inept handling of the problem, Pearsall had been commissioned by the Fauna Preservation Society in Britain to examine the entire problem of the Serengeti National Park area, including Ngorongoro and the rest of the Crater Highlands; and as a result the government was impelled to set up a high-powered Commission of Enquiry and eventually to establish the Conservation Authority. Here was a first class ecological mind, backed by first-hand local experience.

The young warden, Max Morgan Davies, joined us for dinner. ..[at Hotel Manyara]