THE EUROPEAN SETTLERS 
l 75 
There is one attraction in this country for people who like flowers and palms on the 
table and about the house. Here they cost absolutely nothing. You have only to send 
a boy into the bush and he will come back with a young palm which would cost at least a 
guinea at home, or with a handful of flowers such as you might see in a horticultural show. 
“My coffee presents a most thriving appearance. 1 keep it studiously free from 
weeds. Next October I shall be ready to plant up another fifty acres. 
“You asked me to give you some idea of Blantyre. It seems hardly correct to 
speak of it as a town as the houses are still very scattered, yet it is now constituted 
as a township, and rather well laid out with roads. When all the blanks between the 
present dwellings are filled up, it will be a very large and important city. At present its 
future greatness is, as the French would say, only cbauchc. The most striking feature is 
the church, which is a very handsome red brick building, apparently a mixture of Norman 
and Byzantine styles with white domes. It is really an extraordinarily fine church for the 
centre of Africa, and is appropriately placed in the middle of a large open space or 
square, without any other buildings near at hand to dwarf its proportions. When we bad 
the Kawinga scare two or three months ago (I forgot to tell you that Kawinga the old slave¬ 
raiding chief to the north of Zomba 
attempted to try conclusions with 
the British two months ago), it 
was reported by the natives that 
Kawinga’s object in invading Blan¬ 
tyre would be to secure the church 
to himself as a residence ! It is 
at present the mean by which all 
natives measure their ideas of a 
really fine building. On one side 
of the square there are gardens be¬ 
longing to the mission ; on the 
other side a very handsome school 
designed somewhat in the Moorish 
style of architecture. Along the 
Zomba road to the north of the 
church are the residences of the 
European missionaries. This church 
square is connected with the rest of 
Blantyre by a handsome avenue of 
cypresses and eucalyptus. The 
growth of the cypresses is astonish¬ 
ing, as well as their lateral bulk, and 
the road is completely shaded and 
delightful for a stroll, because of a 
sirong wholesome perfume from 
these conifers. The soil about here 
is very red, and the neatly-made 
roads branching off in all directions 
pissing through very green vegeta¬ 
tion give a pretty effect to the eye. 
1 here are no buildings along this road until you reach the vicinity of the Administration 
headquarters which are locally known as the ‘Boma.’ 1 Here we come to a good many 
buildings, and all of them red brick with corrugated iron roofs and of one storey, 
l'he corrugated iron is not as ugly as you might think as it is mostly painted red, which 
gives it more the appearance of tiles. 
1 “ Boma” is a Swahili word for “stockade.” The first settlement of the Government here was on a 
piece of property belonging to a native which had a stockade of thorn around it. Soon after this was 
purchased, however, the thorn hedge was done away with. —TI. H. J. 
CYPRESS AVENUE, BLANTYRE 
