Tnis book is a model of how a remote and
little known country should be described. The authors are officials of some standing. Mr. Gouldsbnry is already known as a writer the Plateau the native woman appears to be very far from of vigorous and picturesque verse, and Mr. Sheen° has ten downtrodden. Royal descent is reckoned through the mother, years' experience of the Plateau—a long time in so young a and the country seems to be a paradise for the mother- rned anthropologist. The State—and is a trained and lea h combination has produced a moss interesting and valuable her village so that she may keep an eye on him. When she .work. Elaborate studies of physical conditions and the dies her sister succeeds to her title and rights. The wife, too, native races are varied with pleasant descriptions of the is a personage. Among some of the tribe it is always leap- year, and a girl has the right to go to a young man's hut and incidents- in the life of the British official and most useful
advice to the would-be traveller. It is a curious place the claim him in marriage.
Tanganyika Plateau, and well deserves the honour of a "The fierceness of the Wemba woman is proverbial. On several monograph. Northern Rhodesia is sufficiently out of the beaten one of the writers has been awakened in the middle of the night by a much-bitten husband, who lute plaintively track, for at present no railway enters it, and it lies no coast asked that he may be placed in gaol until morning, as the only port. Some fifty thousand square miles in extent, it may be said safe place from his wife, who was pursuing him like an avenging to lie between the four great lakes of Nyasa, Tanganyika, fury. Tolweru, and Bangvveulu. Moat of it is plateau with an The white man, in his administration of justice, has followed altitude of from four to six thousand feet, co that the climate for the good British practice of being guided by native law " so Central Africa is especially healthy. We are so ignorant about far as that law is not repugnant to natural 'justice and Imperial history that probably few people could say offhand humanity." The imported law is English, as opposed to the low and when that country became part of the Empire. Its Roman-Dutch system of Southern Rhodesia. The most history begins with the founding of the African Lakes Cor- serious difficulties seem to be to prevent the natives staking poration and their feuds with the Arab slavers. Sir game-pits, which are a hideous danger to travellers, and 'Frederic Lugard in the early days played a part in its affairs, to regulate their custom of lopping trees and burning the and in 1889 Sir Harry Johnaton made treaties with native chiefs branches so as to manure their gardens. There is an excellent and induced the British Governmentto proclaim it a,protectorate. provision which forbids the giving of credit to natives for goads For a long time it was called British Central Africa, although it sold beyond twenty shillings by any one not himself a native. was part of the British South Africa Company's territories. The pictures given of official life are very pleasing, though The late Mr. Codrington became its Administrator in 1898; the authors modestly excuse themselves for writing at length the following year the headquarters were removed from on the ground that Mr. Lionel Portman's Station Studies Blantyre to Fort Jameson, and in 1900 it was definitely named has exhausted the subject. Officials on the Plateau seem to North-Eastern Rhodesia. Under Mr. Codrington's rule it understand the amenities of camping in a way which has advanced rapidly till the scourge of sleeping-sickness fell upon still to be learned in ninny parts of British Africa. The it. It is emerging now from its depression, and a few months country is a paradise for game, and as the natives are born ago it was amalgamated with North-Western Rhodesia. The hunters there is no lack of good shikaris. Elephants seetn traveller may enter it by the railway from Cepe Town to to be increasing, though big tuthkers are getting scarce. The Broken Hill or by Chinde and Lake Nyasa, or if he is in authors believe in the existence of tendes, or tuskless quest of discomfort he might come west by the Congo from elephants, though Sir F. Lugard and other African hunters Lobito Bay, or north by Tete and the middle Zambezi. He have doubted their existence. There seems, too, to he some must bring his own stores and equipment with him, for there foundation on the Plateau for that famous hunter's tale of a, are no shops, and he should import a bicycle, for there are no burial place to which elephants resort to die. Generally horses. The Plateau is not in the least like anything South speaking, while game of all sorts is plentiful, one has to African, for, as the authors point out, its cachet is more in work harder for it than in East Africa. The chapter on keeping with Zanzibar than with Buluwayo. In this con. Missions is written with good sense and fairness. The authors wilted world its isolation is wonderful. From Broken Hill, are in no doubt as to the value of miss:onary enterprise, and they the nearest point on the railway, it takes a mail-runner four are very sensible of the great difficulties which missionaries weeks to get to Abercorn, its chief centre. There are no have to face. The chief missionary agencies in the country are liquor licences on the Plateau, and nearly all the white men tit:, London Missionary Society—the oldest—the White Fathers, are married and have their wives with them. There are no and the Livingstonia Mission of the Scottish Church. The great industries and few settlers ; the land is still in the hands of test of missionary success is still to come, for Mohammedanism the natives, its first masters, and the real currency seems to must appear hi North Rhodesia, as it has appeared in German be calico. Altogether a strange, peaceful backwater of territory and in North and West Central Africa. Experience Empire, and we can understand the charm which the authors shows that the religion of Islam makes only too potent an so loyally proclaim—the long lines of purple hills, the wide appeal to the African native.
tracts of woodland, "the dim, inscrutable silent*, of the virgin The authors make no immoderate claims for the future.
land where great beasts move noiselessly in the twilight." They doubt if the. Plateau can ever be co. ionized by the • It is pre-eminently the black man's country, and the authors ordinary type of white farmer. It is rather, they think, a describe native life with great fullness and that sympathy plantatiottcountry, where crop; like rubber and cotton can be which only comes from ample knowledge. The leading tribe grown with native labour. For both of these valuable products on the Plateau is the Awemba, a race of warriors with a most there are good prospeote. They are very rightly opposed to intricate system of tribal government, who till a few years the preposterous scheme which would make North Rhodesia ago were the terror of the countryside. Properly speaking, a native reserve and a dumping-ground for the superfluous there is no native problem, for the tribes are prosperous and native population of South Africa. There is good reason Ldward Areal& Lie.. net•:
)
The writers give a cue instance of the native power of transmitting long-dietance messages in e story that when some of the Awemba were killed in the Somali war wailing are those concerned with marriage. A translation is given of a really vigorous and poetic antiphonal marriage chant. On in-law. A son-in-law must work in her garden and move into h occasions tracts of woodland, "the dim, inscrutable silent*, of the virgin The authors make no immoderate claims for the future.
land where great beasts move noiselessly in the twilight." They doubt if the. Plateau can ever be co. ionized by the • It is pre-eminently the black man's country, and the authors ordinary type of white farmer. It is rather, they think, a describe native life with great fullness and that sympathy plantatiottcountry, where crop; like rubber and cotton can be which only comes from ample knowledge. The leading tribe grown with native labour. For both of these valuable products on the Plateau is the Awemba, a race of warriors with a most there are good prospeote. They are very rightly opposed to intricate system of tribal government, who till a few years the preposterous scheme which would make North Rhodesia ago were the terror of the countryside. Properly speaking, a native reserve and a dumping-ground for the superfluous there is no native problem, for the tribes are prosperous and native population of South Africa. There is good reason
white neighbours are still a thing of the future. to believe that the scourge of sleeping-sickness may be
The general condition of the natiVe is higher, not because he stamped out during the next decade. With that and with the has risen above that of his southern brother, but because he has Congo territories on the west free for trade the Plateau never smik below the savage level; while the practice of instruct, should be a good medium for European trade vid Nyasaland and iag native clerks and artisans at mission schools and training them in the Government workshops and departmental offices at the Zambezi. Some kind of railway communication is neces- Fort Jameson provides . the country with a rake of skilled sary, were it only a light railway, and the best claim seems rers labou and clerks which farther south is filled almost entirely to be that of a branch line from Ndolo in the west. Such s line by alien natives from the Cape, Pertuguese territory, or the would work a vast change. It would make white farming Transvaal." •• a profitable venture, and it would enable horses to be imported • The Great lhateau of Northern Rhodem, By Cullen Gouldsbury and Hubert through the fly-belts.. The Plateau is a perfectly good natural Bhcane. With an Introduction by Sir Alfred Sharpe, IC.C.M.G. London horse country if the approaches to it were safer and we esai
well understand the anxiety of its few white inhabitants to find a better means of conveyance than the comfcrtless =chile or this precarious bicycle.
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