Almost all of the cattle in Rhodesia died in 1896: “total annihilation of the cattle by rinderpest – no milk, no beef in a few days – but lots of lovely smells from dead cattle.” Thus Earl Grey, writing to his son from Bulawayo, Rhodesia, May 8, 1896.

Less than six years later, after a slow and costly replacement of the cattle that had been wiped out by rinderpest, another almost invariably fatal disease of cattle broke out in Rhodesia. Originally thought to be a virulent form of an already well-known disease, Texas fever or redwater, it was, in fact, a disease never before seen in Rhodesia, a disease unknown to veterinary science, a disease that we now call East Coast fever.

Stanley Portal Hyatt, who made a living by operating ox-drawn wagon trains, and who was bankrupted by the death of his oxen, later wrote: