The natives of British Central Africa

The principal crops cultivated in British Central Africa are maize, millet (of several kinds), rice, ground-nuts, beans, sweet potatoes, cassava, yams, pumpkins, several kinds of gourds, and tobacco. Bananas are planted near most villages in the Shiré Highlands, and are the staple crop of the Wankonde; they are less common west of the Upper Shiré. Cotton and sugar-cane are grown in some places; also the saccharine sorghum (the imfe of the Zulus); but no sugar is made—both kinds of cane are only used for chewing. Sesamum (chitowe) is grown in order to extract the oil from the seeds, and chamba (Indian hemp) for smoking. In villages near Blantyre, a few papaw-trees, pine-apples, and grenadillas are grown; but most of the fruits eaten by natives are wild ones.

A certain number of plants are utilised which grow with little or no cultivation. Most villages are surrounded by castor-oil bushes; tomatoes (and, where they have been introduced, Cape gooseberries) grow like weeds among the other crops; so does a tiny kind of grain (Eleusine, I believe), like small bird-seed, which is called maere, and is so troublesome to husk and prepare, besides not being very palatable, that it is not gathered except in times of scarcity. Various plants which grow wild, or spring up like weeds in the gardens, are eaten as vegetables in time of scarcity; the commonest is a kind of Prince of Wales’s feathers (Amaranthus caudatus), which when boiled is not unlike spinach.

Maize was probably introduced into Africa by the Portuguese, three hundred years ago. The Anyanja would seem to have obtained it from the Yaos, and the Yaos from the coast, if we may judge from the etymology of the name—in both languages, chimanga; Manga being the name for the coast. Nearly all Bantu languages have distinct words for it, showing, either that they did not derive it from each other, or that the name did not travel with the thing.

Sweet potatoes, tobacco, beans, and some of the minor crops are grown in, or close to, the villages, in among the huts of the more scattered ones, or outside the reed fences of the kraal enclosures. The tubers of the sweet potato are planted in flat mounds, about six feet by four or five, and the convolvulus-like stems and leaves trail over the ground. Cassava is sometimes planted close to the villages, sometimes in the regular gardens; it is grown from cuttings; a piece of the stem about a foot long, and cut off sloping at each end, is stuck into the ground and grows into a handsome shrub about six feet high, with light green, palmate leaves. These are used as a vegetable, being boiled like spinach. This plant is supposed to have been introduced by the Portuguese; a great number of varieties are cultivated; that usually seen is the sweet kind, which requires no special preparation, and can be eaten raw. Some of the others are buried for some time before being taken up, then steeped in water to get rid of the poisonous juice, and allowed to dry before being pounded.

Of beans there are endless varieties; one kind, often grown close to villages, is a small shrub with yellow flowers; these beans are gathered and eaten green.

Tobacco is grown both for home consumption and for sale. A good deal of attention is paid to the plants, the leaf-buds being pinched out to make the rest of the leaves grow larger. When ready, they are gathered, soaked in water till they turn brown, and spread in the sun to dry. The Yaos plait them into twists; the Shiré Anyanja pound them with water, and make them up into balls; the Chipetas and Angoni make theirs into pyramids. Tobacco is used for smoking, but more frequently in the form of snuff. To make this, the leaves are dried by the fire in a potsherd, and then ground on stones. When tobacco is chewed, it is mixed with lime got by burning snail-shells. Smoking is not a continuous process as with Europeans, but a large pipe is passed round, and each man takes a pull or two at it. This is the usual method of refreshment, when halting for a short time on a journey. Men will also smoke the intoxicating hemp (chamba or dakha), which they say is ‘instead of food and drink’ to them when they are tired, though they likewise admit that it ‘catches their legs.’ The plant grows about the villages without any special cultivation. Its use seems to be older than that of tobacco; it was smoked by the Bushmen before the Bantu penetrated into South Africa.

The gardens proper may be a short distance from the villages, or they may be three or four miles away. The people begin by hoeing the land close to their dwellings; when the soil is exhausted, they move farther out, and so on, from year to year. When the gardens come to be inconveniently far away, the village is moved; and thus the population is continually shifting from place to place, and one sometimes finds sites of old gardens in what one had thought was untouched bush.

When a man has selected a site for a new garden, he marks the place, and bespeaks, or as the natives say, ‘betroths’ the ground, by tying some bunches of grass into knots, or, if there are trees on the spot, twisting some grass round their trunks. He is perfectly free to choose, so long as the land is not in cultivation, or has not been bespoken by some one else; and, once marked, no one can interfere with it. The grass is then burnt off at the end of the dry season, and with the rains, in November, or the early part of December, the hoeing begins.

Where there are bits of alluvial soil close to a watercourse, which are either kept moist by the stream or can be easily irrigated, maize is sown during the dry season, so as to be gathered green early in the year when no other is to be had.

Some people break up the ground for their gardens during the winter or dry season, but the earth is then very hard, and most consider that it is no use doing so till after the rains have begun. If the garden is a new one, the ashes of the burnt grass (or the grass itself, if any has sprung up before the hoeing begins) are hoed into the soil for manure; if maize was grown in it the previous year, the dry stalks are carefully burnt for the same purpose.

The universal agricultural implement is the hoe, which, in this part of Africa, has a short handle, so that the person wielding it has to stoop, but also gains much more power for the stroke than one has with a long handle. The blade is leaf-shaped, rounded to a blunt point in front, and tapering to a spike at the back, which is driven into the handle, and, if it projects at the back, hammered down. The blade was formerly made by native blacksmiths, but is now generally bought at a trader’s store and fixed into a handle by the purchaser, who chooses a stout piece of wood with a knob at the end—either a root of a tree, or a strong branch with a piece of the fork it springs from. Wooden hoes are still used in some remote places among the hills. They have very long, rather narrow blades, set into the handle at an acuter angle than the usual iron hoe, but, like it, suggesting the origin of the implement from the primitive forked branch with one of its ends cut short. Where hoes are unattainable, as in the case of refugees cultivating ‘scratch’ gardens in the bush in time of war, a still older instrument is used—the sharp-pointed digging-stick of bamboo. There are stories which seem to point to a time when this was in general use, and speak of the introduction of hoes.

Maize is sown in rows about six feet apart, the soil being gathered into heaps, and three or four grains sown on the top of each. I have seen a man and his wife doing this together, one making the holes with a pointed stick, while the other dropped the grains in. Pumpkins and gourds are sown on the same heaps with the maize, and spread out between the rows. The garden is then left alone unless the growing maize-plants require earthing up a little from time to time, till the rains are over, when it is time for the ‘second hoeing,’ to get rid of the weeds which have sprung up. ‘The time of hunger’ comes after the rains, when the last year’s corn is eaten, and the new is not yet ripe—about March. This is not altogether due to improvidence, as some would have it, but partly to the difficulty of storing large quantities of provisions. The nkokwes hold just about enough for the year, and even so are tithed by rats and weevils which cannot be kept out; and the insect-proof accommodation in the smoke of the nsanja does not suffice for much more than next year’s seed-corn. Besides this, large accumulations, in a country likely at any time to be ravaged by war, are scarcely a sign of prudence, but rather the reverse.

It is at this hungry time that the pumpkins and gourds come in, and the first ears of green maize from the dimba patches of rich, damp soil by the stream-sides are eagerly looked for. Several sorts of cucumbers and marrows are cultivated, and some grow wild, or half wild; one small round gourd is a really delicious vegetable, almost equal to our custard-marrows. But these are not always sufficient, or there may be an interval before they are ready, and the women ransack the country-side for wild herbs and roots which are not used except as a last resort, while the young people bring home all sorts of strange tit-bits in the shape of grasshoppers, caterpillars, beetles, and grubs. Between the scarcity and the green food, this is usually a season of sickness.

The maize grows to a great height in rich, alluvial soil like that of the Ntumbi plain, and the mapira is even taller. This is a different variety from the amabele of Natal, with its stiff, brush-like heads, generally standing about four feet; the ear of the mapira being a graceful, drooping plume. It is sown about the same time as the maize, but thinned out and transplanted in January. The weeding in both cases has to be kept up from time to time till the corn is ripe.

We have already mentioned how the crops are guarded by ‘medicine’—a bundle of leaves, a snail-shell, a little horn on the top of an upright stick, or various other objects. While the corn is ripening, there are other dangers to be averted by less esoteric means. In most gardens, especially if at any distance from the village, and if there are any patches of brush within easy reach, you may see a platform mounted on poles, with a little hut or shelter on it. Here watchers are stationed day and night to drive away marauders—the baboons who come in troops, and the wild pigs, who are still more destructive, rooting up as well as gathering. In March one heard a continual drumming on whatever metal objects were available, to drive away the pigs; I think this was done in the villages as well as by the men in the watch-huts. One of the few offences for which boys are likely to get a really severe beating is letting the baboons get into the maize. The hippopotamus is very fond of maize, and gardens within reach of his haunts are protected by a reed fence—he is so wary that he will not go near what he thinks may be a trap—though he could tread it down in a moment. The women also frighten him off by making little sham traps out of the huge sausage-like fruits of the mvunguti tree.

Maize and mapira are ripe in May; the former is broken off by hand, and the cobs put into mtanga baskets; there is a special term for the operation of inserting them point downward so as to make the basket hold as many as possible. It is dried on the nsanja, over the household fire, before being put into the nkokwe. The mapira is cut with a large knife or a reaping-hook. These small sickles are much used for cutting grass; but I am not sure whether they are of recent European introduction or not; a straight knife is also used.

Beans and ground-nuts, with the nzama, which is very like a ground-nut and grows in the same way, the seed-vessel burying itself in the earth after flowering, are planted in patches by themselves beside the maize-garden. These are boiled and eaten, green or ripe, and the ground-nuts are also used for oil. They are pounded, boiled, and the oil skimmed from the top of the water. Castor-oil is procured in the same way; it is not used as medicine, but only for anointing the head and body.

Hoeing and weeding are sometimes got through more quickly, when time is pressing (as when the first rains have fallen) by means of a ‘bee.’ The owner invites all his neighbours, men and women, and prepares large quantities of beer, with which they regale themselves after a hard morning’s work. Sometimes the pots are carried out to the garden, and the party consume the refreshment there. Each person has a certain piece of ground allotted to him or her—a ‘row to hoe,’ and the work is got through with singing and mirth. When the chief sends for a number of villagers to hoe his gardens, he entertains them royally with meat and beer.

After the harvest is gathered in comes the mpakasa season, which might be rendered ‘autumn’; the deciduous trees lose their leaves; the grass is dry and ready for burning, and, as the people say, ‘the wind blows and says pi!’ After this comes the real winter (malimwe), when people walk abroad and sit and drink beer, saying, ‘At present there is no hoeing to do, only odds and ends of work about the house’—though, even then, ‘some break up the new hoeing-ground.’ Then comes the time of the grass and bush-fires, when the air is full of flying soot, and then the kokalupsya—the driving rain which sweeps away the burnt grass—and then the last interval of waiting, when the new leaves show themselves in vivid green, red, and yellow, the thorn-trees burst into golden bloom and ‘Mpambe thunders’ in distant mutterings along the horizon.

The soil is exhausted by maize in two years, or three at the most; after that new ground is broken up, and the old is planted with beans and other less important crops for another year or two. This seems to have gone on for centuries, the forest closing up again over the deserted gardens, as if they had never been; it is this repeated cutting down, together with the bush-fires, which has changed so much of the primeval forest into straggling scrub.

HUNTING

None of the tribes of British Central Africa can be said to live by hunting, or even to make it one of their principal occupations. The nearest approach to a hunting tribe are the Apodzo, or Akombwi, of the Lower Zambezi, who are professional hippopotamus-hunters, and are sometimes spoken of as a clan, but as they speak a language of their own, they should perhaps be reckoned as a separate people.

Forty-five years ago, game seems to have been scarce in the Shiré Highlands proper, though abundant near the Lake and west of the Shiré. The subsequent wars and famine allowed it to increase again; and of late years some of the protected kinds have actually come back to their old haunts. The native who wishes to hunt now has to take out a gun-licence, and can no longer dig pitfalls for elephants, or set snares for buck, as he did in the old days.

No close time was recognised, but nature took care of that, for it is impossible to see or pursue animals through the thick grass of the spring and summer. Where game was at all abundant, hunting parties were organised: a long line of men would advance in a semicircle on the patch of grass or bush to be surrounded. The leader, who carried the ‘medicines’ for luck, was in the middle, and with those on either side of him would wait till the ends of the two ‘wings’ had met on the other side. When the circle was complete, the signal was given by whistling, and the hunters advanced all at once. These men would probably be armed with spears; perhaps a few of them with guns. The Chipetas and Mang’anja shoot a great deal with bows; they do not seem to be first-class marksmen, though I have heard that some of the boys from the Katunga’s district were very expert in bringing down birds flying. The only archer whose exploits I ever had the opportunity of witnessing seemed unable to hit a bird which I suppose to have been a white heron at a moderate distance. But it may have been an unlucky day with him. The bow was used as a weapon of war (with or without poisoned arrows) before the Angoni introduced the shield and stabbing spear. War arrows are a yard long and tipped with iron; blunt cane or wooden arrows are used for shooting birds. The iron arrow-heads are of a great many different patterns; some are smooth, others have as many as half a dozen barbs below the point.

Many natives now have guns, usually flint-locks, which have come into the country through the Portuguese trade. I remember examining one of these guns belonging to a Ntumbi villager; it was immensely long in the barrel and had ‘Tower’ and ‘G.R.’ engraved on the lock. They imply the elsewhere obsolete powder-horn, which one sometimes sees very neatly carved, and where a more advanced stage of weapon has been reached, the percussion-caps are carried in the hollowed head of a club made of some hard wood, which receptacle has an opening fitted with a lid or stopper on one side, and a small hole at the top through which they can be shaken out one by one.

The Yaos observe a certain amount of ritual before starting on a hunting expedition, or, in fact, any journey; this is fully detailed in Africana. The man intending to set out goes to his chief, who consults the oracle of the ufa cone on his behalf, and tells him to defer the journey, if the answer is unfavourable. Dreams are also, as already stated, much relied on in deciding matters of this sort, and unfavourable omens, such as kicking against a stump, or meeting a snake, may send the party back even after it has started. If all is well, however, the chief gives the applicant a talisman to keep him safe—either a thread to be tied round his head or arm, or a small vessel of oil to be carried with him. While he is absent, his wife must not bathe, nor anoint herself with oil, nor even wash her face, and if she has a dream during this period, must be very careful about presenting an offering to the spirits.

The Angoni sometimes hunt with dogs—a better class of animals than the miserable, yelping mongrels which infest the villages. A boy who sold me a pair of tusks of the bush pig (Potamochoerus, a smaller and lighter animal than the European wild boar) told me with great pride that the nguluwe had been killed by his dog. This same dog, if I remember rightly, once attended school with his master—I suppose to keep him out of harm’s way, as an impi of the Machinga was supposed to be on the war-path. He was black, about the size of a small setter, with longer and rougher hair than most of the village dogs (which look like remote and degenerate descendants of fox-terriers, and are white or yellow, or both mixed), and in shape he was more like an Eskimo dog than anything else I can think of. He had on a hide collar, and was led by a string, and altogether seemed valued and well treated. Some young men in one of these same villages told me that they hunted elephants with dogs ‘in Chekusi’s country,’ and usually lost a great many. Men carry whistles, made of a small buck’s horn, to call dogs with.

Traps for game are of many kinds and varying degrees of ingenuity. For large animals, such as the elephant, hippo, or buffalo, there is the pitfall, dug with sloping sides, and sometimes planted with sharp stakes at the bottom, which is such a frequent cause of accident to unwary travellers. It is covered over with reeds and the ground made to look as natural as possible. Old disused pits are no less dangerous, because the grass and shrubs grow over them and hide them from view. They are dug right in the track of the animal in a place where it is found to pass often—as in going down to a stream to drink. In former times, fences (sometimes extending over miles of country) were made to guide buck into these pits.

Another trap for lions or leopards is made by erecting two parallel fences of stout stakes. A heavy log is supported at the further end between the fences and the bait placed beneath it, so that it cannot be seized without pushing aside the slight support; the animal is then killed by the falling log. Smaller traps are set for the different kinds of wild-cat, and baited with mice. Another trap often set for hippos or elephants is a heavy log hung vertically above the pathway, with a poisoned spear fixed in its lower end; the animal treads on a catch which releases the string holding the weighted spear. The poison for spears and arrows is in most cases strophanthus.

Going along one of the paths leading through the bush, one sometimes notices a curious little arrangement of sticks and string, like a narrow gate, about eighteen inches high. This is a msampa trap, designed to catch a buck by the leg, or smaller animals, which run close to the ground, by the neck. A cord with a running noose at one end is made fast by the other to the top of a springy sapling, which is bent down and kept in position by an easily released catch; the noose is then stretched open between the upright sticks, but so as to slip off easily as soon as the animal treads on the catch, when the sapling flies up and immediately tightens the cord.

Several kinds of smaller traps are set for field-rats and mice; one is a long narrow funnel, woven of slips of bamboo, with the ends pointing inwards at the mouth, so that a rat can get in but not out again; the stretching of the slips narrows the entrance, and there is no room to turn round. Some of these traps are woven of mapira stalks or palm fibre. It might be supposed that any mouse could easily gnaw its way out; but the trap is not set and left; it is placed in the creatures’ run, and the grass is beaten to drive them into it, when they are at once taken out and despatched. Sometimes the animal is driven into a trap like this by a dog.

Another mouse-trap is made of a hollowed pumpkin, or the fruit of the kigelia (mvunguti) tree, which looks like a huge woody cucumber. It is baited with roasted maize or ground-nuts, and has a noose at the opening kept stretched by a bent stick, much on the same principle as the msampa.

The Apodzo, already mentioned, hunt the hippopotamus from canoes. Three go out at a time, with two men in each—one to paddle, and one to throw the harpoon. This consists of a strong barbed head, loosely inserted into a wooden handle to which it is attached by a stout cord, wound closely round the whole length, and uncoiling when the weapon is thrown; so that, when the wounded brute dives, the wood floats and shows his whereabouts. When he has been struck three times, the ropes are gathered up and twisted together, being then strong enough to hold him, and slowly hauled in till he can be despatched with spears.

Although not to be reckoned as hunting, the capture of wild honey, and of swarming white ants (neither an unimportant item in the native larder), may be mentioned here. The wild bees (some kinds of which, but not all, are stingless) make their nests in hollow trees, which are frequently pointed out to passing hunters or travellers by the small bird known as the honey-guide. They make a fire, cut a hole in the tree large enough to pass the arm through, smoke the bees out with lighted wisps of grass, and carry away the honeycombs in pieces of bark. The River people hang hives on trees—small cylindrical boxes made of bark, in which the bees build,—and remove them when full.

White ants, when they swarm, are fat yellow insects, an inch or more in length, which fill the European with unconquerable loathing, when they make a sudden irruption into the house, blunder into the lamps, crack the glasses, and get down the back of your neck in the dark. It is the small and much more insignificant workers who do the damage in houses, eating wood-work and plastering walls with their galleries; but they do not excite the same antipathy. The native, however, regards the inswa in a very different light; in fact, one of the Blantyre catechists has been known to use them with great effect in a sermon, as a simile for the delights of this world! Sometimes a large ant-heap is found close to or actually among the huts of a village; it never struck me at the time to ask whether this was accidental, or whether the responsible person had purposely located his abode close to this desirable game preserve. Passing by such a place one day soon after the rains had begun, I found two or three youths busy catching termites. They had dug in the heap a short trench, which, as they had roofed it over with grass, looked for all the world like a grave; and into this the swarming insects collected. At one end was a round opening with a cover, which was lifted off from time to time, and the inswa taken out by handfuls. They are roasted over the fire in an earthen pot, ‘like coffee,’ said my informant.

FISHING

Fish are caught with rod and line, nets, traps, and weirs, and sometimes speared. There are two kinds of fish-spear—the momba, with a straight point for striking the fish, and the barbed chikolongwe, or gaff, for hooking it out. Weirs are usually made at the mouth of a stream; a fence is built right across with only one opening left in it, and behind it is placed a large mono, or basket-trap, constructed on the principle of a lobster-pot, and perhaps five feet long. The weir in the illustration is at Ngofi, on the eastern side of Lake Nyasa.

Smaller traps of the same kind are sunk in the water, like lobster-pots. Nets are sometimes set overnight and anchored with a couple of stones, the upper edge being kept on the top of the water by a line of floats. Other nets are cast from canoes; sometimes they are hauled in and the fish scooped on board with the canoe-balers, sometimes the ropes are taken on shore and the net hauled up on the beach like our seines. This is done with the largest kind of net, requiring twenty men to handle it. Another is chiefly used at night: the net is lowered between two canoes, while a third is paddled towards it with a lighted torch on board to attract the fish. The men alternately show the torch and knock loudly on the sides of the canoe, which seems to daze the fish and drive them towards the net. Hand-nets are also used, like shrimping-nets, with handles working over each other scissor-wise, but kept in place by a cross-bar which is not in the European implement. Nets are generally made of the Bwazi fibre. Net-making and canoe-patching are (or were) the two great industries of Likoma island; and the whole lakeside population is more or less engaged in fishing.

Fishing with rod and line may often be seen on the Shiré, where, in some places, small platforms are built out from the bank, so that the angler can cast his hook in deep water and free of reeds or bushes. The hook is large, not barbed, but bent in towards the shank, to make it more difficult to slip off; it is made of iron wire and sharpened on a stone. The bait is usually maize-paste. After throwing the line, the angler strikes the top of the water sharply a few times with his rod, to agitate it, and call the attention of the fish. Poison is sometimes put into a pool to stupefy the fish, when they come to the surface and can be gathered out of the water by hand; a species of euphorbia, and a large shrub (ombwe) with bean-like pods and white blossoms, are used for this purpose, and can often be seen growing in the villages.

CANOE-MAKING

Canoes are made wherever there are trees of sufficient size growing where they can be brought down to the water without too much difficulty. ‘The tree,’ however, ‘may be chosen far up on the hills, in which case it is drawn down by great numbers of men with ropes of thick creepers. A great thickness of bottom is left for the purpose, and rollers of bamboo or stick are spread across the path to facilitate the dragging.’ The commonest form of canoe is the ‘dug-out,’ made from a single log of mbawa or some other hard wood, but there are some made of a large sheet of bark sewn at the ends. Hewing out a canoe with axe and adze is slow work, and it is no wonder that it is considered matter for rejoicing and brewing of beer when finished.

If the vessel is for the chief’s own use, he often attends, to see how it is progressing and cheer up his men with libations of moa. There is not much variety in the shape; but some have incurved gunwales like those in the illustration, some straight. The paddles are short, with oblong blades, about the size and shape of an ordinary spade. In low water, the canoe is propelled with punting-poles, which are always necessary because the level of the river changes very quickly and sand-banks shift their places from season to season. Canoes are kept at the regular crossing-places of rivers by men who will ferry passengers over for a consideration. When not in use, the paddles and poles are carefully hidden, to prevent the canoe being summarily ‘borrowed.’ The largest canoes are, perhaps, thirty or forty feet long, and have ten or twelve paddlers, who work sitting, and sing in time to their strokes.

WEAVING

We have already said that spinning, weaving, and sewing are considered emphatically men’s work, as they were by the ancient Egyptians. The material spun is most frequently cotton, though, in the Chipeta country, south-west of the Lake, the fibre of the bwazi (Securidaca longipedunculata) is more in use. This fibre is very strong, and is used for fishing-nets; but native cloth, whether cotton or bwazi, is not often seen now, since European material (very inferior to it in quality) has been easier to obtain. The spinning-wheel is unknown, and the process of twisting the thread by hand and then spinning it on the njinga, a wooden spindle with a whorl or reel of tortoise-shell (or hard wood), is a very leisurely one. Three or four bobbins full of thread are used to ‘set’ the loom, which consists of four posts driven into the ground and connected by cross-bars. It is set up in the open space near the owner’s hut, or perhaps in the bwalo. The web is never very large; two yards long by a yard in width appears to be the outside. The process has often been described, and can be seen in the illustration. There are also two excellent photographs of it in Sir H. H. Johnston’s book.

Sewing is now done almost everywhere with European needles, which are very much in demand. Nine times out of ten, the requests of your carriers desiring extra tips, or of casual beggars (whom, however, I never found either as numerous or as troublesome as frequently represented), were for needles or soap (sopo or sabao according as British or Portuguese influence predominated in the experience of the speaker). Native needles and awls are either iron, or sharpened bamboo splinters; I have once or twice seen these, but the large ones, for thatching, are still in common use. Many men sew very neatly; they have an ingenious way of mending holes in their calicoes which is not like our darning, but consists in button-holing round the edge of the hole and continuing round and round inward, till it is filled up. Some seemed to aim at decorative effect, as in darning a blue cloth with red thread. The more artistic kinds of sewing, and such flights as the cutting out and making of Arab shirts, have probably been learnt on the coast, or from men who have been there; but the men, in general, are neat-fingered and take to these things almost instinctively, while to their wives, who are gathered into sewing classes at the missions, by way of making them ‘womanly,’ they are mostly pain and grief. One of a husband’s duties is to sew his wife’s calico; if he neglects this it is held to be a sufficient ground for divorce. It is curious to notice the sort of convention that has grown up about these things. Originally, I suppose, these and similar occupations were looked on as light and elegant relaxations for gentlemen who came back weary from the wars, or from hunting, or from a six months’ trip to the coast, and so gradually became exclusively appropriated to them. I once in my ignorance asked an old woman if she could make me a basket, and she replied in a slightly shocked tone that it was nchito ya amuna—men’s work. I imagine, though I never heard the point raised, that it would be little if at all short of improper for a man to set about making pots.

The word ruka, ‘to weave,’ is used both for the weaving of cloth and the making of mats and baskets; but in these last there is a certain distinction observed, ruka being applied to what is properly woven or inter-plaited, while another word, pika, describes the plaiting of the nkokwe, where the strands all run one way, and are twined in and out between the uprights, but the rows are not linked into one another. There is also a kind of mat made with bundles of reeds laid side by side and connected by strips of cane twined in and out between them in pairs. This process is called by English basket-makers ‘pairing,’ as distinct from ‘weaving.’

Baskets are of many kinds, each with its own use and name, and it is characteristic of the native habit of mind (one illustrated in all primitive languages), that there is no general term for a basket pure and simple without reference to its kind or use. This, I fancy, touches on the old controversy between Nominalists and Realists. But that the Bantu are not incapable of the degree of mental abstraction implied in general notions is shown by the fact that they have words for ‘tree’ and ‘bird,’ quite irrespective of the species of either, all of which have their own proper names.

One of the commonest kinds of basket is the mtanga, used for bringing in maize from the harvest-field, for carrying provisions or anything else that will go into it (being of convenient size and shape for carrying on the head), and, very often, for storing things inside the hut. It is made of flat slips of bamboo, woven at first as if for a mat; when a square of a little more than a foot across is finished, the slips are turned up, the corners rounded, and the upright part of the basket woven in a circle, which is finished by cutting off the ends at the top and enclosing the rim between two thin bamboo hoops, sewn on with strips of bark. Mtangas are made in several sizes, being both larger and smaller than the above; the diameter is always about equal to the height. They are very strong and serviceable, and Europeans find them useful in many ways. The mtungwi is a double basket with flat wooden rims, one of which fits into the other; it is made of split bamboo, like the mtanga, but the slips are narrower, and both halves are rounded, instead of beginning as a square. The rims are of white wood, often charred or otherwise blackened, and ornamented with patterns cut out on it with a knife. Small flat baskets (nsengwa), from four to eight inches across, are used as plates, or to bring eggs, or other small articles for sale. They sometimes have an ornamental rim, worked in herring-bone pattern with a certain fibrous root, alternated with the rind of cane. The large flat baskets used for winnowing or sifting are eighteen inches or two feet across, and three or four inches deep in the middle; they slope more from the rim than the nsengwa, which is flat-bottomed. Bags of different shapes and sizes, which men wear round their necks on a journey, are woven out of palm-fibre. A much rougher construction is the coop or crate made for the transport of fowls, which is sometimes round, sometimes cylindrical.

The universal sleeping-mat, made of the bongo reed (Phragmites), is sewn rather than woven; the edge of the mat is formed of a length of peeled bamboo, to which strings are fastened at regular intervals; then these are passed through the split reeds by means of a bamboo needle. The yellow, shiny surface of the canes makes these mats very attractive when new, but they splinter easily, and do not last long as a floor-covering in European houses. They will roll up tightly, with the upper surface outward (not the reverse way, as the curves of the canes are all on one side), and are so carried on a journey, as the Angoni have them in Plate 23. Finer and softer mats are made of palm-fibre; these are really woven, as are also the fumbas, or sleeping-bags, used by the River natives as a protection against mosquitoes; they are woven round two ends and one side, leaving the other side open. The man gets in, draws the edges together, turns over so as to get the opening underneath him, and sleeps soundly, untroubled by ventilation, or the lack of it. Of course, the fabric is not close enough to exclude the air, but a person unaccustomed to it would find his breathing seriously impeded, and I have never been able to understand how natives are able to sleep wrapped head and all in blankets, and looking more like chrysalids than anything else.

The making of bark-cloth is another vanishing industry; but formerly it was the only fabric known in many districts where cotton was not cultivated, and the other fibre-plants not utilised for weaving. The bark used is that of the fig-tree, or the myombo (Brachystegia), which has a leaf like the ash. The hard outer bark of the tree is first taken off, and then a large sheet of the inner carefully removed, by first cutting a long upright line, and then two parallel circles. It is scraped, and then beaten with a mallet made of ebony or some other hard and heavy wood, which has its face deeply scored with lines crossing one another, so as to present almost a toothed surface. It is folded, hammered, folded to a smaller compass, and hammered again, till it is beaten out to a yard in width and a tolerably even thickness. It is usually of a terra-cotta colour, but sometimes dyed black by steeping in a certain kind of mud found in the swamps. This dye does not always last, but wears off and leaves the cloth pale grey. The dyeing is done before beating. There is also white bark-cloth, which I have not seen; it is made by burning off the hard bark from the tree, which heats and bleaches the inner. Good bark-cloth is very soft and pliable, and very warm in cold weather. Even after the introduction of English cloth, women were often seen wearing bark-cloth above their calico on cold or wet days. As already remarked, it continues to be worn ceremonially in the mysteries.

IRONWORK AND WOOD-CARVING

The Mang’anja, like the Mashona and other Makalanga tribes, have been distinguished from time immemorial as workers in iron. The Zulus do not appear to have practised this art to any great extent, though it was handed down in certain families, who probably learnt it from the Makalanga. It is not common among the Baronga, and M. Junod, in giving a woodcut of a knife in a carved sheath (of the kind very common on the Zambezi and elsewhere), which he obtained from a travelled native, remarks that it is ‘pièce rare et qu’on m’a dit provenir de la tribu des Bandjao’—a distant tribe in the north-west; it is quite possible that this was really a Mashona knife. The Zulus do not appear to have a distinct word for a knife, either calling it umkonto (a weapon, or tool in general), or using the Dutch word mes.

Livingstone, when first visiting the Shiré Highlands in 1859, found that ‘Iron ore is dug out of the hills, and its manufacture is the staple trade of the southern highlands. Each village has its smelting-house, its charcoal-burners and blacksmiths. They make good axes, spears, needles, arrow-heads, bracelets, and anklets, which are sold at surprisingly low rates; a hoe over two pounds in weight is exchanged for calico of about the value of fourpence.’ In 1876 there was a smelting-furnace within a few hundred yards of Blantyre station, and ‘a smithy in an old hut beside the station was daily patronised.’ The furnaces have mostly disappeared, and the smiths do not often make hoes or axes, preferring to hammer scraps of imported iron—for instance, pieces of the hoops from packing-cases—into small knives or the like. I made a rough sketch of the smithy beside the bwalo at Ntumbi; it was in a very dilapidated condition, and I never saw the smith at work there, though he sold me a small razor of his own manufacture, which is now in the Ethnological Museum at Cambridge. The forge contained the usual fireplace, with a ridge of earth banked up round it, rather higher than the ordinary fireplace in a hut. On the further side of the hollow were two upright clay-pipes, into which the two openings of the goat-skin bellows were fixed when at work; they communicated below with another pipe opening into the midst of the embers. A split bamboo is used as tongs, and the smith keeps a pot of water beside him to quench the ends when they take fire. The anvil is a flat stone, and a large stone is used as the forge-hammer; iron hammers are used in later stages of the process. The characteristic Nyanja knife is two-edged, with carved wooden handle and sheath, as shown in the illustration. The one shown in the illustration is not a very elaborate specimen, but they are sometimes beautifully carved, and of all sizes, from six inches and under to about a foot, but the tiny ones sometimes seen are only made for sale to travellers as curios, on the Lower Shiré and Zambezi. These knives serve every possible purpose of a pocket-knife, and are worn round the neck, or under the left arm, by a string passing over the right shoulder, or, if small, tied on the upper left arm. The sheath is made with a projecting ear or loop for the string to pass through.

The Yaos prefer another style of knife, with one edge, and two or three grooves on the blade; the specimen in the cut has a handle of hippopotamus ivory.

The illustration shows another product of the smith’s art—that known as an ‘Angoni handkerchief’; it is worn round the neck, and used (with a vigour calculated to strike amazement into the unsophisticated beholder) to remove the results of toil from the forehead, or even to perform the ordinary office of a handkerchief for the nose.

Wood-carving is of a primitive sort, though often very neatly done. The patterns on the knife-sheaths above mentioned mostly consist of triangles, chevrons, and lozenges, and are not nearly so elaborate as some specimens of Mashona and Zambezi work. Indeed, the former seem, at least in some cases, to have originated in unskilful copying of the interlaced pattern usually called Celtic, which is found in some of the latter, and probably introduced in the first instance by the Portuguese. The carving on blackened wood, which is very popular among the Yaos, is confined to the same elementary designs, and is done with very little relief, and no attempt at modelling of surface, the only object being to show the white figures on the dark ground.

Pillows or neck-rests of the Mashona or ancient Egyptian pattern are in use, but I never saw one being made, nor came across a new one. But it must be remembered that the people of the Shiré Highlands were, ten years ago, comparatively unused to the experience of a settled life, in which you can begin an important piece of carving with a reasonable prospect of being able to finish it. The country west of the Shiré has not been quite free from alarms and excursions for even so long as that. Quaint figures of birds are sometimes attempted by adventurous artists, but these are not very common, and I do not even remember coming across a stick with the top carved into the likeness of a human head, except the tsanchima staff mentioned in a previous chapter, which must have been of considerable age.

POTTERY

There are many kinds of pots—large water-jars, the large cooking-pots used for making porridge, and the small ones for boiling its accompaniments. The women, having procured the right kind of earth, break it up on a stone and knead it with water till it attains the proper consistency; then they mould a round lump, make a hole in the middle and work away at it with their hands and now and then a bamboo splint. No wheel or mould is used. Sometimes an incised pattern is made while the clay is soft. When finished, the pot is stood in the shade for a day; then they put it out into the sun, and when dry, burn it in an open wood fire. I am nearly sure, however, though, most unfortunately, I did not make a note of the fact at the time, that I once saw something like a small oven in use for the purpose. Pots not expected to stand the fire are considered fit for use after drying in the sun, and will hold water satisfactorily, though apt to grow soft if kept continuously wet. Smaller pots are sometimes coloured red by mixing oxide of iron with the clay; sometimes they have quite a good glaze, and the red surface is variegated with black bands. A large water-jar always stands inside the hut, which is filled up every day when the women fetch water from the nearest stream. They carry a large earthen or calabash jar on their heads; on the River this is balanced on a thing called a ngoti, which is a little wooden stand, with a saucer-shaped depression above and one below, something like a flat double wine-glass (the frontispiece will give a better idea of it than any description), the upper concavity fitting the jar, and the lower one the head. I suppose this eases the pressure on the head, like the grass rings or pads (nkata) used by all who carry heavy loads; but at first sight it seems as if it would add to the difficulties of carriage.

A long-handled gourd is carried along as a dipper, to ladle the water into the jar, and after it is full, a few leaves, or a twist of grass, are put on the top to keep the water from spilling. I have seen flat wooden crosses used (I think in Cornwall) for the same purpose.

In places where there is danger from crocodiles, as in some parts of the Shiré, the women carry a gourd at the end of a long pole, so that they can dip the water from the top of a high bank, and run no risk of being seized. Accidents of this kind have frequently happened to women stooping at the water’s edge to fill their jars. The crocodile seems to turn round and knock people over with a swing of his tail, if he cannot get near enough to seize them with his jaws. A letter written in English by a native a few years ago, related a tragic occurrence of this sort—how a man, going down the river with his wife, and camping for the night on a sandbank, awoke in the morning to find that ‘the woman had gone away with a crocodile!’

SALT-MAKING

Salt is so much in demand, for reasons already adverted to, in this part of Africa, that its production is an important industry. Its principal centre is near Lake Chilwa, but inferior salt is made in places at a distance from that lake, for home consumption, by burning various grasses and other plants. In either case the process is the same. The ashes, or the salt earth dug up from the banks of the lake, are put into a flat basket, preferably an old, worn nsengwa, and water slowly poured on and allowed to drain through into a pot placed beneath to receive it. ‘The water so strained through is saltish,’ says the Rev. H. Barnes, speaking of Likoma, ‘and is used with food to flavour it. In some parts this water is boiled till it is boiled away, and the result is a very white salt.’ Sometimes the water is allowed to evaporate without boiling; I do not know if this is done at Chilwa, but the salt brought from thence is distinctly grey—certainly not white. People come in small parties from a distance, and live at the kulo, or salt-pit, where the earth is dug, till they have finished making all they want. The process is a slow one; it usually takes a month to make eighty pounds of salt, as large numbers of people do not engage in the work at once. They pack it in matting bags holding about twenty pounds’ weight apiece, and carry it down to Blantyre and elsewhere for sale. A ‘salt ulendo’ is always sure of a speedy sale for its wares.

People who make salt at home—it is generally the women—do not, as a rule, take the trouble to boil or evaporate it, but use the liquor as it is for cooking.

Besides Lake Chilwa, there are some places near the mouth of the Ruo, whence salt is obtained, and some is said to come from the neighbourhood of Lake Nyasa, but this last is bitter and more like saltpetre. Sir A. Sharpe describes the process of salt-making in the saline swamps of Mweru, in very much the same way as the above, only the apparatus is different—‘funnels made of closely woven grass rope’ taking the place of baskets. Evidently these funnels or strainers are specially made for the purpose, showing that the industry is more specialised.