CHAPTER VI. 
THE EUROPEAN SETTLERS 
A S mentioned in a preceding chapter, there were 345 Europeans at the 
end of the year 1896 settled in the eastern part of British Central Africa, 
of whom about thirty were non-British subjects. These Europeans are 
divisible into four classes—officials, missionaries, planters and traders. 
The missionaries and their work will be dealt with in Chapter VII. The 
officials have been referred to in the Appendix to a preceding chapter ; there 
remain therefore the planters and traders to be now considered. 
The planters come from very much the same class which furnishes the coffee 
planters of Ceylon, India, Fiji, and Tropical America. They are most of them 
decent young fellows of good physique and good education, who, possessed 
of a small capital, desire to embark on a life which shall combine a profitable 
investment for their money, with no great need for elaborate technical education, 
and an open-air life in a wild country with plenty of good sport, and few or 
none of the restraints of civilisation. One of our planters can look back on 
something like twenty-two years’ experience of British Central Africa, another 
on eighteen years’ experience, a third ten, a fourth nine ; but most of the 
men did not arrive in the country before 1890 or 1891. The planters now 
probably number nearly 100. The chief thing grown is coffee; but tea 
has been started on two estates (on one of which it has been growing for 
about six years), and on others cinchona and ceara rubber, cotton and 
tobacco are cultivated. Some planters go in a great deal for cattle keeping 
and breeding. 1 
The coffee plant was originally introduced into British Central Africa by 
Mr. Jonathan Duncan, a horticulturist in the service of the Church of Scotland 
Mission, but the idea owes its inception to the late Mr. John Buchanan, C.M.G., 
who was at the time also in the service of the Church of Scotland Mission, 2 
1 During the past two or three years the use of cattle by the European settlers in the Protectorate 
has greatly increased. When I first came to British Central Africa in 1889 no one except at two or three 
mission stations and at the African Lakes Company’s establishments at Mandala and at Karonga kept any 
cattle. A few native chiefs had herds of 20 or 30 beasts hidden away in the mountains, afraid to avow 
their existence in case they should be raided by the Angoni or the Yao. At the north end of the lake 
the Wankonde had enormous herds, as was the case with the Angoni in the west of the Protectorate, but 
no one came forward to trade in cattle and distribute oxen among the Europeans in the Shire Highlands. 
All this is now changed. Many Europeans have been up into the Angoni country, and certain Adminis¬ 
tration officials have interested themselves in the introduction of cattle into the Shire province. The 
price of milch cows now stands at a little more than two or three pounds a head, while oxen may fetch as 
little as 15/. each. The chief inducement in keeping cattle is to use the manure for the coffee plantations, 
but of course the supply of milk and butter is a valuable adjunct to health. 
2 Which he joined as a lay member specially in charge of horticultural work in 1876. 
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