114 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
border form the remaining native group which keeps large numbers of 
cattle ; for the tribes of the northern plateau, in spite of considerable 
available land, are not pastoralists to any extent, the chief exception 
being the Isoka District with 7,000, where, however, tsetse, extending up 
from the head of the Luangwa valley, has been causing destruction. 
Small stock in Northern Rhodesia are widely spread : they are in almost 
every village and receive very little attention. Goats are a universal 
possession, far outnumbering cattle in most parts, and the same may be 
said of poultry ; sheep are more local in distribution, and pigs, which 
become crossed with the wild variety, seem to have an uneven distribution. 
Transhumance is practised by the cattle owners of the Barotse Plain 
and the Kafue Flats, in each case in response to the flooding of the alluvial 
belt. The Maroze possess two sets of villages, on the plain and in the 
savanna respectively. ‘They occupy the former from May to January, 
cultivating their maize and grazing their cattle ; then, when the Zambezi 
rises in February, they move to their woodland villages, where the cattle 
manure their manioc and millet land. The inundated villages have, of 
course, to be repaired regularly before reoccupation. The Baila of the 
Kafue, on the other hand, live in large permanent villages, above the 
floods and far from the river, where they grow maize. ‘The river is at its 
highest in March and, when the floods have receded in June, the migra- 
tion to the flats takes place, grass being burned for hunting and grazing ; 
temporary villages are occupied, where fishing can also be had. The 
Baila are exceptional in the variety of their diet of maize, fish, milk, and 
game meat. 
Foop STAPLES. 
The distributions of four of the leading food crops of Africa meet and 
overlap in Northern Rhodesia ; the three cereals, comprising the great 
millet—sorghum, the lesser millets of which eleusine is the most important, 
and maize. ‘These, with manioc (cassava), form the food staples of the 
native population. Allowing for some uncertainty as to the identity of 
the millets mentioned by the authors of reports, it has been possible to 
plot the crop distribution with general accuracy. It is thus evident that 
the small millets, especially eleusine, prevail in the north-eastern plateau 
while sorghum is more cultivated in the central Districts. ‘This crop, 
however, has yielded the first place over most of its area to maize, most 
probably introduced from the south and certainly increasing where the 
contact with European farming is close. The most outstanding fact 
elicited is the penetration of the territory by manioc as a staple crop. 
The lower Congo region is generally held to have been the centre of 
dispersion of this American plant, and it will be interesting to learn 
whether its area is now unbroken to the Rhodesian border. It is clear — 
that manioc is still being carried south-eastward by the Angolan immi- 
grants in Barotse, and, for reasons to be mentioned, its cultivation is being 
encouraged elsewhere by the Administration. Its appearance along the 
railway belt and its dominance in Lusaka are perhaps due to this. But 
manioc is also the staple along the Luapula valley and thence eastward 
to Lake Tanganyika. Where the small millet appears as secondary crop 
