BANTU NEGROES 



675 



not seem to have given them any notion of manuring the soiL When a 



piece of ground is exhausted by the frequent bearing of crops, they clear 



a fresh piece of brushwood. In this way, of course, they encroach year 



by year on the forests that remain in the country. It is this wasteful 



habit of the African — whose only idea of manuring the soil is, when he 



first clears it, to cut down and burn to ashes all the brushwood and trees, 



afterwards digging the ashes into 



the soil — which has done so much 



to turn Africa from a land of forest 



into one of prairie, steppe, and even 



desert. As a Negro tribe flourishes 



and increases in numbers, so it 



gradually destroys all the forests 



in its country by extending its 



clearings for agricultural })urposes 



and abandoning each plantation as 



the soil becomes exhausted after 



the first few crops. 



The Baganda seem to have 

 appreciated shade-trees, and even 

 trees with handsome foliage, and 

 to have left them growing near 

 their habitations (rather than to 

 have planted them). Yet to a 

 Muganda the idea of one's de- 

 liberately planting a tree for the 

 sake of its beauty is one almost 

 beyond his grasp at present. Their 

 country blazes with magnificent 

 flower-shows of which the Baganda 

 remain quite insensible. The ekiri- 

 kiti {Erythrina), the Lonchocarpus, 

 the Spatliodea, the Combretiini, the 

 Mussceoida display to him their 

 lamps of scarlet and crimson, their 



lilac bunches and cascades of mauve, and he sees no beauty in all this, 

 though he has a keen eye for what is lovely and elegant in other 

 directions. I have never once heard a pure-blooded Negro in Africa 

 express admiration for a beautiful or bright-coloured flower, though I 

 have seen the little Congo Pygmies occasionally pick off small blossoms 

 and thrust them by the stalk into the holes which they have bored in 

 their upper lips. 



376. JIETHOl) OV CARRYING PIPE SLUNG OVER THE 

 LEb'T SHOULDER 



