vni 



PREFACE 



discovery of this information is not, however, to 

 the preoccupied official, nor to the hard working 

 agriculturist ; these have their own duties and 

 responsibilities in other directions. If, therefore, 

 a perusal of the following pages should leave a 

 lurking sense of their incompleteness, of a want of 

 smoothness arising from the difficulty I have ex- 

 perienced in dove-taihng together the various com- 

 ponent parts, I would ask my readers to be rather 

 indulgent than censorious, for 1 have, at all events, 

 succeeded in compressing into the limits of a single 

 volume material which might well have proved 

 sufficient for several. In any case I shall feel more 

 than satisfied if I succeed in conveying to students 

 of the great Dark Continent some idea, however 

 dim and incomplete, of the immense value of the 

 splendid district of which Zambezia after all forms 

 but a part. 



In the writing of this book I have derived most 

 valuable assistance from Dr. G. McCall Theal's 

 admirable work entitled " The History and Ethno- 

 graphy of Africa South of the Zambezi," as also 

 from the works of Mr. H. L. DufF, Sir Charles 

 Eliot, and Sir H. H. Johnston. The hst of birds 

 appended to Chapter VIII has been arranged in 

 accordance with the carefuUy compiled work of my 

 friend Mr. W. L. Sclater, M.A., F.Z.S., Director 

 of the South African Museum at Cape Town; 

 those of mammals coincide with Sir H. H. 

 Johnston's grouping of the beasts of the neigh- 

 bourmg colony of Nyasaland, whilst my botanical 

 appendices are drawn up largely as the result of 

 my own observation based upon the scheme of my 



