ARTS, INDUSTRIES, ETC.
Agriculture: Maize, tobacco, gardens, etc. Hunting, trapping.
Ant-catching. Fishing. Weaving. Basket-making. Bark cloth.
Ironwork. Wood-carving. Pottery. Salt.
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.
[Illustration: GRINDING SNUFF]
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.
[Illustration: WOMEN WEEDING MAIZE-GARDEN
Note the pumpkins between the rows of maize]
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.
[Illustration: WOMEN CARRYING BASKETS OF MAIZE]
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.
[Illustration: BOY WITH BOW]
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.
[Illustration: CANOES AT LIWONDE’S (UPPER SHIRÉ)]
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.
[Illustration: 1. MAT-MAKING.
2. NATIVE LOOM]
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.
[Illustration: MAKING “MTANGA” BASKET]
[Illustration: BOY WITH CRATE OF FOWLS]
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.
[Illustration: 1. “MBENGO” (“Angoni Handkerchief”) and NYANJA SHEATH-KNIFE
2. YAO KNIFE, WITH HANDLE OF HIPPOPOTAMUS IVORY
In the Ethnological Museum at Cambridge]
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.