preserve by drying, and then eat roasted. They make a
kind of salt by burning a plant called musilia, and also
from the leaves of the banana tree.
The villages on the Tanganika plateau are usually built
near a river, and almost invariably in the middle of stately
forest trees. They are surrounded .by a stout palisade
four to five feet high, with earth banked up about the
base; sometimes a ditch is dug outside this. The gates
Granary. Hut
V IL LA G E OF FWAMBO,
TANGANIKA PLATEAU.
in this palisade are made of a split tree-trunk; this pivots
on two pieces of wood, and at night is fixed by a bar.
Inside the stockade a pot is buried near the gate, where
grain is placed for the Musimo. The huts themselves are
round, low, and huddled one against the other. In any
space between them are set up high and huge pillars of
reeds, coated with earth and covered with a thatched roof.
These are granaries. The opening is reached by a pole
notched to serve as a kind of ladder. The thatch of the
huts projects so as to form a verandah, under which is
the mill-stone. The inside is bare of anything except the
.2.96
fireplace. As I have already said, all the villages are dirty
beyond words. No sort of filth is ever carried outside the
stockade; everything accumulates for five or six years,
at the end of which time, all the surrounding soil being
exhausted, the village is usually' deserted. As it is, I
have known the fields as much as five miles from the
village before it was thought worth while to leave it.
The people of Mambwe are famous for their skill in
working iron. It is very abundant in the neighbourhood,
and the smiths—whose trade is hereditary—win and smelt
the metal themselves ; their
furnaces are built of earth,
with small openings all round
the base. Having prepared
a certain quantity of wood-
charcoal they make a fire of
it, put in the metal, and
cover it with green wood;
the openings at the base are
all stopped but one. Into
this one is inserted a sort of
bellows made of two goat
skins. Towards the top of
the furnace is an oblique
opening through which the
artificer can watch the progress
of the operation ; this
lasts about three days, after
which the holes
are opened and
the pig-iron
runs out, and
is left to cool.
This operation
may only be
commenced at
the new moon, m a m b w e w o m a n a n d c h i l d .
297