The natives of British Central Africa

								

the Chilwa plain and the valley of the Tuchila, which runs into the Ruo.
West of the Shiré we have the Kirk Mountains, running north and south,
with some striking peaks—Dzonze, a collection of rounded humps; Mvai, a
rocky pyramid, with a three-cleft peak; Lipepete; and, far to the north,
Chirobwe, with a sharp rock pointing from its summit like a finger.
These mountains are mostly granite and quartzite. West of the lake and
the Shiré, there are outcrops of sandstone, and this part of the country
also contains coal. Iron ore is abundant almost everywhere, especially
the form called hæmatite—a soft, red stone, known to the natives as
ng’ama or kundwe, and used by them as paint, and as medicine; lumps
of this can be picked up in the beds of all the mountain streams.
Graphite, or black lead, is found in the same way, and is used by the
women for colouring their pottery, to which it gives an effect exactly
like stove-polish. I think these are the only minerals of which they
themselves take much account. Gold exists in the quartz in some places,
and Sir Harry Johnston says: ‘In the valleys of the rivers flowing south
to the Zambezi (in Mpezeni’s country), gold really does exist, and
was worked at Misale by the half-caste Portuguese,’ in the eighteenth
century, and even later. But the Mang’anja and Yaos only know it through
their dealings with Portuguese and Arabs, and have no word for it in
their languages. Ndalama, which, with the addition of ‘red,’ means
gold, and of ‘white,’ silver, and by itself = ‘money,’ is, I fancy, a
borrowed word—the Arabic dirhem. I once bought (in the West Shiré
district) a bangle of pure copper, which was vaguely said to have been
obtained from a place to the north-west, but where it had been worked, I
could not ascertain. The brass which is fashioned by native craftsmen is
always bought from traders.
There are no deserts in this part, neither are there any dense forests of
huge trees, such as we usually think of when Central Africa is mentioned,
and such as are really to be found in the Upper Congo basin, on the Gold
Coast, and elsewhere. Two Yao boys, who had served in Ashanti with the
King’s African Rifles, spoke of the West African forest with the same
sort of surprise and wonder as any English rustic might have done. Both,
independently, answered the question, ‘What is that country like?’ with
the same expression—‘Palibe kuona, one cannot see!’ adding that the
trees were high—very high (with an upward gesture of hands and eyes)—away
up above one’s head. Large trees, growing close together, are just what
one does not find, as a rule, in the country we are thinking of. The Bush
(tengo, or chire) usually consists of small trees, thinly scattered,
with tufts of grass, small bushes, and various herbaceous plants growing
between them, and here and there a large tree standing by itself—perhaps