NATIVES OF BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 429 
has inhabited Tropical Africa he has not, with one or two doubtful exceptions, 
cultivated a single indigenous food plant or domesticated any wild beast or bird 
of his own portion of the continent . 1 
Of his cultivated plants : maize, manioc (cassava), sweet potato, common 
potato, tobacco, tomato, “ chilli ” (red and green) pepper, pineapple, papaw, 
yams, reached him from America. Although these things are now spread right 
across Africa in their cultivation they are natives of America and were in¬ 
troduced from two to three centuries ago by the Portuguese . 2 The sorghum 
(Holcus, Durrha) grain, the millet, the eleusine, the colocasia (arum) yam, and 
the banana, the oldest of his cultivated plants, are natives of the Mediterranean 
basin, the Nile valley, or Tropical Asia, were first cultivated (on African soil) 
by the Ancient Egyptians, and reached the negro by slow descent from Egypt. 
Sugar-cane, rice, wheat, oranges, limes, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, gourds, 
onions, not improbably the castor oil plant, the Datum , hemp (from India) and 
most peas and beans were first introduced by Arabs and were re-introduced by 
the Portuguese. The coffee shrub, though indigenous to Africa only, was not 
cultivated till the Arabs, Abyssinians, Portuguese and English took it in hand. 
The cocoanut was introduced from Asia, the edible date palm from the Mediter¬ 
ranean basin . 3 The oil palm of West Africa and Nyasaland is not cultivated 
—no trouble has been taken to improve it. The only doubtful exceptions 
to this rule are the ground nuts (A me his and Voandzeid) which may be 
indigenous to Africa , 4 and certain semi-cultivated beans of the genera Tephrosia 
and Crotalai'ia, which the native tolerates in his plantations rather than 
deliberately cultivates. The Sesamuin plant, the seeds of which produce such 
a fine oil, is probably in its cultivated form an introduction from Egypt or 
India. Indigo and possibly cotton are indigenous but what has the native 
done to improve them by cultivation ? 
I am not of course referring to the negroes of British South Africa or 
Portuguese East and West Africa or those under French tutelage or Arab or 
Abyssinian or Berber rule, or to the mixed races between negro and Arab, 
Egyptian, Abyssinian, Libyan or Berber. I am dealing with the pure negro 
uninfluenced and unmixed as you find him throughout Tropical Africa between 
the Sahara and Cape Colony. 
The Domestic animals of the Central African negro are the following: the 
ox, sheep, goat, dog, cat, fowl, muscovy duck and pigeon. It is hardly correct 
to include the pig, because pigs are only kept where they have been introduced 
by Portuguese or British and are not popular as domestic animals. The cattle 
are almost always of the Indian Zebu type, with the tendency to develop a 
hump, a dewlap, and short thick horns. But the Angoni-Zulus on the plateaux, 
west of Lake Nyasa, have a few cattle of the southern type which are recent 
introductions from across the Zambezi. Though dwarfed in size they are like 
Cape cattle, with long horns and straight backs and without dewlaps. Another 
difference between these two breeds of cattle lies in the coloration. As a 
rule, the long-horned variety is unicoloured, dun, chestnut, greyish-white, 
“ strawberry,” or bluish-grey. The humped or short-horned kind is most 
commonly black, or black and white, or grey, dun, chestnut and white ; nearly 
1 I am referring of course to the pure-blooded negro, uninfluenced by the Semite or European. 
3 With the exception of the common potato which has been quite recently brought in by the English. 
3 Though several wild species of date grow abundantly in Tropical Africa no one of them has ever 
been cultivated by the natives. 
4 Some think that these ground nuts came from America. Their cultivation in Tropical Africa 
is very partial. 
