116 é SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
associated with the smaller millets. In many Districts the main part of 
the garden is devoted to millet for only one year, a new garden being 
prepared for the staple crop each year, and the old garden used for mixed 
subsidiary ‘ relish’ crops. ‘The number of successive years in which a 
garden grows millet must, of course, depend upon soil fertility, and as 
we have little information about the plateau soils, no deduction can be 
drawn from the facts recorded. But three years appears to be the 
maximum, save for special reasons. ‘Thusthe Amambwe ofthe north-east, 
who are industrious hoe cultivators, have a four-year rotation system, 
consisting in millet, fallow, a leguminous crop or maize, and again millet, 
by which they use the same garden for eight years or more. Again, the 
Maroze cattle owners of the upper Zambezi systematically manure the 
ground by moving their kraals at.intervals, when the cattle are in the 
savanna during the Zambezi flood season. ‘These, however, are exceptions, 
and it is abundantly clear that dependence upon a millet crop results in 
the maximum destruction of timber, with the attendant impoverishment 
of the soil. Moreover, this reliance upon the chitemene system accounts 
for the temporary character of settlements, which is characteristic of all 
but a few areas of the Protectorate. 
Gardens must repeatedly be moved to avoid carrying wood for long 
distances. Soon the gardens are found to be inconveniently far from the 
village, and so this is moved. ‘There are many social and economic con- 
sequences of such an unstable form of existence. Soil exhaustion is by 
no means the only cause of the movement of-villages ; among the others 
are various superstitions and the insanitary condition of huts. But it is 
only for agricultural reasons that the displacement amounts to several 
miles. At the same time it must be remembered that the people usually 
return to the original site after a lapse of time sufficient for the recovery 
of the woodland ; they are deeply attached to their own special piece of 
country. Each District Officer was asked to state the average period during 
which villages remain in one site, and in general the life of the savanna 
village appears to be from three to four years. Where it is shorter there 
is probably exceptional poverty either in soil or in trees, and, conversely, 
longer periods are to be accounted for by abnormally good conditions. 
The small millets are grown nearly everywhere to some extent for the 
purpose of brewing beer, and in Districts where they also form the staple 
food there is grave risk of the native’s improvidence leading to famine 
during the months, generally February to April, before the new crop is 
ready, as in Luwingu, north of Lake Bangweolo, for example, where 
about one-half of the eleusine is devoted to beer. 
Manioc as a Rhodesian crop offers several contrasts to millet. In the 
first place the natives, after planting the shoots on the mounds they have 
prepared, must wait for at least one year before the tubers mature ; and 
this period may be eighteen months, as in Chienji, two years, asin Mankoya, 
or even three, as in Mongu. ‘This implies a greater amount of foresight 
than is the case with other crops and also more stability of the population, 
for since two crops may be taken successively from the same patch, a 
garden will last five or six years (e.g. Mwinilunga). Secondly, the 
cultivator does not have to spend time in scaring birds from his field or 
