Northern Nyasaland 1895

Northern Nyasaland. 

By the Rev. James Henderson. (Scottish Geographical Magazine, 1900, pp. 82-9.) 

The author summarises observations accumulated during several journeys made between 1895 and 1899 in the territory which lies west of the northern half of Lake Nyasa. The following extracts are of anthropological interest. 

"The produce of the native gardens in the coast plains anld on the lower slopes are cassava, sweet potatoes, ground-nuts, several kinds of millet, maize, beans, pumpkins, tobacco, baunaas, and plantains; as well as, where internal influences have been felt, rice, lemons, pineapples, papaus, custard-apples, and mangoes. A kind of hlemp is grown by the fishermen for making nets, and in the swampy plains a pith-tree called mnabingwe is found, which yields a substance nearly as light as cork, uised for floats. In the neighbourhood of Bandawe, the wildl arrow-root plant is plentiful. The Konde people round Karonga ornament their villages with rows of cotton trees. . . . The quality of the soil, except where it is alluvial, is poor, and where it has been long continuously under cultivation, as in the Usisya Plain, it appears to be quite exhausted." (p. 83.)

"Until four or five years ago, sheep and goats were the only food animals kept on the lake shore except at Karonga, where cattle were always abundant, but since then cattle bave been successfully initroduced into most of the villages. There is little doubt that with the practical disappearance of the buffalo, owing to the rinder- pest, the tsetse-fly has also been got rid of from districts that wcre formerly infested." (p. 83.) 

"Lion point, which separates Florence Bay from Young Bay, presents, at the Water's edge, a yellowislh white face of soft rock, which has been hollowed out by the action of the waves, and by weathering. It contains a native pictorial art, showing figures of men and animals in Egyptian-like profile, some stationary, others in motion." (p. 84) 

"The inhabitants [of the Tumbuka terrace plateans behind the shore plains], who are of the Tumbuka, Henga, and to some small extent Poka tribes, show some skill in agriculture, cultivating successfully all the crops in common use on the lake shore." (p. 85.) "The Tumbuka and Henga tribes are skilled in the smelting and workilng of ironi. Their ruinied ftirnaces, spread over a wide area ini surprising numbers, give evidence both of the general prevalenece of iron ore, and of the extent to which the wouking of it was cairried on in the past." (p. 87.) 

"Passing, on now, we come to consider the mountain range which we saw in rear of the northern section of the Tumbuka plateau, to which the name Nyika is generally applied. Nyika is not a proper name, as used by the natives. It is simlply the uplands,' and in that sense it is in very common use. Tanganyika, I venture to think, is nothing more or less than Nyanja ya Nyika, 'the lake of the uplands.' (p. 87.)

"The Poka inhabitants of the Nyika plateau, probably the aborigines of the country, and very low in the native scale of civilisation, have little skill in cultivation. Keeping a few goats and sheep, more for barter than for use, they subsist mostly onl pease. Their huts are built with a view to concealment, and are formed by scooping out the ground, and covering the hole with sticks and turf. Placed, as rnany of them are, among the heaps of rock debris, it is almost impossible to detect them from any distance. On the west, the gardens are made in the open, but near the east face they are to be found on the steep sides of the gorges." (p. 88.) "

As a whole, the district, which I have been describing, is very thinly peopled. The inhabited country is only a fraction of the uninihabited. Fronm the head of the Henga valley to the Rumphi River there is not a single village. The few Poka villages scattered over the Nyika plateau are hardly worth counting as occupations. The Vipsya [the southern extension of the Tumbuka plateau] is entirely without people, and in the far west, until the traveller has descended a long distance inlto the Loangwa valley, he rarely encounters more than two or three villages in a day's march. The great centres of population are Bandawe among the Tonga tribe, Ekwendeni and Hora among the Ngoni and Tumbuka tribes, Kondowi among the mixed Henga alnd Poka, and Karonga among the mixed Henga and Konde. No exact census has yet been made." (pp. 88-9.)