NATIVES OF BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 425 
plant crops annually in the same locality. With rare exceptions he has no idea 
of manuring the ground and so continuing to cultivate the same piece of land 
for ever, as would be the case in Europe and in most parts of Asia. Imagine 
what would be the result in other continents more populated than Africa if year 
by year each family required to transfer their cultivation to a different piece of 
ground. What a contrast to Africa is India, a mere peninsula of Asia with 
its teeming population three times larger than the total population of Africa, 
and yet for generations subsisting in the same continually cultivated soil 
whereon their forefathers dwelt before them ! One of the great lessons we have 
1. A large wooden hoe. 
2. Wooden hammer, for beating out 
bark cloth. 
to teach the Central African negro is fixity of tenure, the need of settling 
permanently on one piece of land, and, by careful manuring, the constant raising 
of crops from within a certain definite area. The keeping of cattle, pigs, goats, 
and sheep will assist in manuring the soil. 
The Wankonde are somewhat more careful in their cultivation than the 
other negroes of this territory. They carefully return all weeds, wood-ashes, 
and village refuse into the soil, while the grass and weeds growing on the fallow 
land are cut down and burnt in heaps ; or else they are laid out on the surface 
of the soil in long rows, the soil on either side of these layers of cut herbage is 
dug into trenches or furrow, and what is taken out is thrown on the top of the 
weeds. These then decay underneath and enrich the soil of these raised beds. 
