NORTH-EASTERN RHODESIA 71 



was when first I fell captive to its charms, I 

 cannot help associating Fort Jameson with some 

 village towns where I have lived in Cornwall 

 and Devon. And when I saw Fort Jameson 

 that day I thought that the Fal or the Tamar 

 might lie but the other side of the ridges, and 

 that a duck-pond was sadly missing in the main 

 street. There is no village pump in Fort Jameson, 

 but there is a township well, and though the inn 

 lacks a signboard and many of the little distinc- 

 tions of the English rural tavern, it is wholly 

 in keeping with the general provincial British 

 appearance of the place. 



Involuntarily one almost expects to observe 

 villagers in smocks returning begrimed and weary 

 from the ploughs, and it is when you actually 

 see the " villagers " that the idol you have been 

 worshipping falls to the ground and you awake 

 to the fact that this, after all, is not England 

 but Central Africa, that Fort Jameson is the 

 capital of North-Eastern Rhodesia and not a 

 West-country village, and that the villagers 

 have black faces instead of white, and their 

 smocks are white instead of blue. For the in- 

 fluence of the East Coast has imprinted itself 

 deeply on the native inhabitants of the town, 

 just as the English minds of the white officials 

 have given the church, the houses, and the streets 

 such a look of England. Each has carried with 

 him the memories of his home-land. The white 

 man painted them on his dwellings, and the 

 native has maintained them in his long, flowing 

 white Swahili robes. Here are aliens to this 

 civic life. Coal-black Awemba bringing ivory 

 from the North sit down on the pavement before 

 the African Lakes Corporation store, waiting 

 for return loads to Tanganyika. Down the road 



