NATIVES OF BRITISH CENTRAL AFRICA 453 
languages, and are favourite exercises of ingenuity and wit. Here are some 
samples culled from the Rev. D. C. R. Scott’s Mananja Dictionary: 
“ I built my house without a door.” 
Answer: “An egg.” 
“ My hen laid eggs in the thorns.” 
Answer: “The tongue between the teeth.” 
“ The sick man does not wish to run, but when he sees this he must; the chief who 
comes to this must run whether he will or no.” 
Answer: “ A steep descent.” 
“When either a man or a seed dies there grows up another.” (There are as many 
good fish in the sea as ever came out of it.) 
In regard to their habitations : the original form of house throughout all 
British Central Africa was what the majority of the houses still are—circular 
and somewhat like a beehive in shape with round walls of wattle and daub and 
thatched roof. This style of 
house is characteristic of ( a ) 
all Africa south of the Zambezi; 
{b) all British Central Africa ; 
as much of the Portuguese 
Provinces of Zambezia and 
Mozambique as are not under 
direct Portuguese or Muham¬ 
madan influence which may 
have introduced the rect¬ 
angular dwelling ; (c) all East 
Africa 1 up to and including 
the Egyptian Sudan, where 
Arab influence has not intro¬ 
duced the oblong rectangular 
building; (A) the Central 
Nigerian Sudan, much of 
Senegambia, and perhaps the 
West Coast of Africa as far 
east and south as the Gold 
Coast, subject of course to the same limitations as to foreign influence. 
But over the greater part of the Congo Basin (with a few marked exceptions 
in the north-east and east of that region) and the western part of Africa down 
as far south as Mossamedes, the house is rectangular in shape but sometimes 
a very long building indeed or a great many houses united to form the side of a 
street . 2 
This rectangular house in Western Africa is so universal and is found in such 
remote districts as are only being entered for the first time by white men at the 
present day, that it is improbable it could owe its origin to the Portuguese, 
and there has been no other extraneous influence over those regions within the 
historical period. Nevertheless, Portuguese influence never spread very far 
beyond the coast in West Africa and there is evidence in all books of travel 
1 In parts of East Africa, the normal type of house differs from the ordinary round house of Central 
Africa by being more exactly beehive-like in shape, with the thatch of the roof touching the ground. See 
for this the illustrations in my book on Kilimanjaro. 
2 Samples of these different kinds of houses are illustrated in my book on the River Congo. 
