Vol. XXI, No. 10 WASHINGTON 



October, 1910 



T 



ATHOMAL 

 ©(SmAPIHIE€ 



O 



IMPRESSIONS AND SCENES OF MOZAM 



BIQUE 



By O. W. Barrett 



W?'/// Photographs by the Author 



A COUNTRY as big as the Atlantic 

 ZA States from Florida to New York, 

 X JL with the capital near the southern 

 boundary and half a dozen smaller towns 

 scattered along the coast ; more than 

 3,000,000 inhabitants, of which only 

 about one per cent are whites ; one of 

 the oldest of all European possessions 

 and one of the richest in agricultural 

 possibilities, at least, but one of the least 

 known countries in the world. Such is 

 Mozambique. 



Four or five good ports and as many 

 bad ones ; five towns and a small but up- 

 to-date capital city, and a generous num- 

 ber of military posts and outposts, a few 

 of which are in the real raw interior ; 

 millions of acres of the finest alluvial 

 soil fairly aching to show the farmer 

 what big crops may be grown ; waterways 

 like the Zambesi, the Limpopo, and plenty 

 of smaller ones to allow cheap handling 

 of products ; no deserts, no salt sinks, no 

 large swamps, no mountainous wastes, no 

 impenetrable jungles ; out of some twenty 

 only one or two tribes that object seri- 

 ously to paying taxes to the government, 

 now that they realize that the tax collec- 

 tor is a vital organ of the white tribe, 

 which objects to any one tribe extermi- 



nating another in the good old w^y ; for, 

 wicked as a bush policeman tries to be, 

 he must needs fall far short of the unre- 

 strained chief's "induna". 



The early history of this strange sec- 

 tion of East Africa should not be, even 

 if it could be, written. We know the 

 old-time black was as bad as a barbarian 

 can be, and the endless tale of persistent, 

 widespread, and continuous butchery 

 would not be good to read. 



Yet the ethnologist may well listen to 

 the half legend, half true stories of the 

 clans, tribes, and races that have been 

 lost forever. No pottery, no carvings, 

 no ruins will remain after a few more 

 years ; only language traces ( for the slay- 

 ers sometimes spared a few of the come- 

 liest maidens) and father - to - son oral 

 history. To ride over the site of a native 

 village which probably held a thousand 

 huts less than twenty years ago, to note 

 the bits of charcoal, pieces of clay bowls, 

 bones, and the few ominous breaks in the 

 heavy ten-foot stockade fence made of 

 hardwood logs set upright close together, 

 forcibly reminds one of the wretched 

 people, tired of fighting, who sought to 

 gain respite by erecting a barrier that no 

 foe could burn or climb over, only to 



