Landscape Architecture, Fifth Edition:

A Manual of Environmental Planning

and Design 5th Edition, (Ebook PDF)
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This book is dedicated To Marj Marjorie Todd Simonds,
1920–2012
Wife of John Ormsbee Simonds for 63 years, without whose
“help and inspiration” the first and subsequent editions of
this book would not have been written.
I also wish to acknowledge that this edition would not have
been possible but for the generous contributions of my
landscape architect colleagues, firms, and agencies around
the world; the many outstanding photographers; the
support of my wife, Laurie; the work of my staff; and,
especially, the enthusiasm, dedication, and tireless devotion
of my assistant, landscape architect Breanna Rau.
Barry W. Starke
 Contents
Cover
About the Authors
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Foreword
Epigraph
The Hunter and the Philosopher

1. THE HUMAN HABITAT AND SUSTAINABILITY

The Human Animal
Nature
The Natural Sciences
The Ecological Basis
Earthscape
Sustainability

2. CLIMATE
Climate and Response
Social Imprint
Accommodation
Microclimatology
Climate Change/Global Warming

3. WATER
Water as a Resource
Natural Systems
Management
Water-Related Site Design
4. LAND
Human Impact
Land as a Resource
Land Grants
Land Rights
Surveying
Use
Reuse
Topography
Surveys
Supplementary Data

5. VEGETATION
Topsoil Mantle
Plants in Nature
Plant Identification
Plant Culture
Introduced Plantations
Invasive Species
Vanishing Green
Urban Agriculture
Urban Forestry

6. THE VISUAL LANDSCAPE

The View
The Vista
The Axis
The Symmetrical Plan
Asymmetry
Visual Resource Management
Landscape Character
Modification
The Built Environment

7. THE PLANNED ENVIRONMENT

 A Conservation Credo
Environmental Issues

8. COMMUNITY PLANNING AND GROWTH MANAGEMENT

The Group Imperative
Problems
Possibilities
New Directions
Growth Management
Scatteration and Urban Sprawl
Restoration

9. THE REGIONAL LANDSCAPE

Interrelationships
Regional Form
Open-Space Frame
Greenways and Blueways
The Essentials
Regional Planning
Governance

10. URBAN DESIGN

Cityscape
The City Diagram
The Ubiquitous Automobile
People Places
Urban Green, Urban Blue
The New Urbanity

11. SITE PLANNING

Program Development
Site Selection
Site Analysis
Comprehensive Land Planning
The Conceptual Plan
 Computer Application
Site Development
Site-Structure Plan Development
Site-Structure Unity
Site Systems

12. SITE SPACES

Spaces
The Base Plane
The Overhead Plane
The Verticals

13. CIRCULATION
Motion
Sequence
Pedestrian Movement
The Automobile
Complete Streets
Travel by Rail, Water, and Air
People Movers

14. STRUCTURES
Common Denominators
Composition
Structures in the Landscape
The Defined Open Space
Habitations
Dwelling-Nature Relationships
Human Needs and Habitat
Residential Components

15. LANDSCAPE PLANTING

Purpose
Process
Guidelines
 Advances
Landscape Plantings in Low-Impact Design

PERSPECTIVE
Disavowal and Quest
Findings
Insights
Evolution and Revolution
The Planned Experience

Retrospective
Project Credits
Quotation Sources
Bibliography
Index
 Prologue
In 1961, over 50 years ago, the first edition of Landscape
Architecture was published and instantly filled the void that
existed for a comprehensive presentation of the profession
and how to plan for the human use of land harmoniously
with the environment. These were the early days of what
became known as the environmental movement, sparked by
a series of wake-up calls, such as Rachel Carson’s book
Silent Spring, sending a signal throughout the country—
and, indeed, the world—that people had to fundamentally
change the way they viewed and interacted with their
surroundings. No longer could we continue to think we had
dominion over the Earth and ignore the fact that we are an
inseparable part of nature and nature is part of us. No
longer could we destroy our forests, abuse our soil, pollute
our air and water, squander our natural resources, and
overpopulate the Earth without dire future consequences.
The fledgling profession of landscape architecture, which
had come into being less than a hundred years earlier, was
in the right place at the right time, so to speak, with the
right skills and knowledge to take on the leadership role
among the design professions in this new movement.
Educated and trained in architecture, civil engineering,
botany, geology, horticulture, the natural sciences, and
social issues, landscape architects were uniquely qualified
to assume this role. At the time, however, the profession
was relatively unknown and misunderstood, and its
literature then was for the most part outdated and focused
on a previous era. John Simonds would change that.
John had studied landscape architecture at Michigan State
University, traveled the world, studied Eastern philosophy,
lived among the native people of Borneo, worked in
conservation, became a student of the environment, and
embraced the principles of the emerging science of
ecology. In 1939, John—a member of the infamous “class of
rebels” that included Garrett Eckbo, Dan Kiley, and Charles
Rose—graduated from Harvard with a master’s degree in
landscape architecture.
This placed him in a unique position that enabled him to
become the profession’s major advocate for the
environmental movement and to tell the story of the role of
landscape architecture in it. John wrote the first edition of
Landscape Architecture “because,” he said, “I felt
compelled to get the word out about the comprehensive
profession of landscape architecture.” Over the next 30
years, two revised editions were published with John as the
sole author. The story of my role as coauthor began some
ten years later.
On the afternoon of December 12, 2004, my phone rang,
the caller ID read “John Simonds,” and a dreadful thought
flashed through my mind. It had been several years since
John and I had talked, following two years of intense
communication preparing for the American Society of
Landscape Architect’s Centennial Celebration. John was
not well at that time and I feared it was his family calling to
say that he was gravely ill or had passed away. Following
my hello, the sound of John’s voice engendered a sigh of
relief, and what he was about to say would shift my
emotions from fear to total elation.
“Barry, would you consider working with me as the
coauthor of the fourth edition of Landscape Architecture?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Then another flash—
a flashback to November 22, 1963. Most people who were
old enough at the time remember this as the day President
John F. Kennedy was assassinated and, to a person,
remember where they were and what they were doing at
that time. On that day I was in the library at the University
of California, Berkeley, completely absorbed in John
Simonds’s first edition of Landscape Architecture. Of
course, the assassination of John F. Kennedy was an event
that touched everyone, but for me personally the impact
that event would have on my life and career was clearly
secondary to the one that John Simonds’s book would have
on my future and future generations of landscape
architects.
When John first published Landscape Architecture in 1961,
it was before the digital revolution and modern methods
facilitating the practice of the profession, including
computer-aided design and Geographic Information
Systems. However, what John presented in the first and
subsequent editions of Landscape Architecture is as
applicable today as it was when first published. John’s
genius in communicating the principles of landscape
architectural planning and design, through his writing,
sketches, and shared words of the wisdom of others, is
indeed timeless and will no doubt help shape this century
as it did the last.
During the following months, we exchanged ideas and
worked on the fourth edition. John’s role was to complete
the revised manuscript, and mine was to review the
manuscript and gather photographs—as John described,
“Best in Show”—of works of landscape architecture and
related subjects to illustrate the book. He considered the
writing of Landscape Architecture his most significant
professional accomplishment, and, of course, working with
John as coauthor has been one of the great honors of my
career.
Then, on May 26, I received the phone call that I had
feared that December 12 call to be. After a fall and a brief
stay in the hospital, John returned home, where he passed
away near family and friends. When John died, he had
already finished the manuscript for the fourth edition,
leaving his wife, Marj, in charge of final editing. With
renewed vigor and commitment to John’s legacy—the
legacy of one of the most influential landscape architects of
the twentieth century—my work shifted into high gear, and,
as Marj liked to say, “the rest is history.” (Marj Simonds
died in April 2012.)
The fourth edition of Landscape Architecture has been
published in three languages—English, Chinese, and
Japanese—and distributed worldwide. For the first time, it
is also available in digital format. This fifth edition is the
first to be published without John’s direct input. However,
much care has been taken to preserve the essential
character and timelessness of what he first created in the
early 1960s, while updating other material and providing
refreshing new images and illustrations. It is my hope that
further editions of this book will continue to be published
into the indefinite future, thus extending the legacy of John
Ormsbee Simonds and his contributions toward making the
world a better place.
Barry W. Starke
 Foreword
Landscape Architecture has been written in response to the
need for a book outlining the land-planning process in
clear, simple, and practical terms. In a larger sense it is a
guide book on how to live more compatibly on planet Earth.
It introduces us to an understanding of nature as the
background and base for all human activities; it describes
the planning constraints imposed by the forms, forces, and
features of nature and our built environment; it instills a
feeling for climate and its design implications; it discusses
site selection and analysis; it instructs in the planning of
workable and well-related use areas; it considers the
volumetric shaping of exterior spaces; it explores the
possibilities of site-structure organization; it applies
contemporary thinking in the planning of expressive human
habitations and communities; and it provides guidance in
the creation of more efficient and pleasant places and ways
within the context of the city and the region.
This book is not intended to explain all forms of the
practice of the profession or to explicate the latest
technology. Nor is it proposed that the reader will become,
per se, an expert land planner. As with training in other
fields, proficiency comes with long years of study, travel,
observation, and professional experience. The reader
should, however, gain through this book a keener and more
telling awareness of our physical surroundings. The reader
should also gain much useful knowledge to be applied in
the design of homes, schools, recreation areas, shopping
malls, trafficways … or any other project to be fitted into,
and planned in harmony with, the all-embracing landscape.
This, at least, has been the express intent.
The work of the landscape architect
(architect of the landscape)
is to help bring people,
their structures, activities, and communities
into harmonious relationship
with the living earth—
with the “want-to-be” of the land.
 The Hunter and the
Philosopher
Once there was a hunter who spent his days tracking the
wide prairies of North Dakota with his gun and dog and
sometimes with a small boy who would beg to trot along.
On this particular morning, hunter and boy, far out on the
prairie, sat watching intently a rise of ground ahead of
them. It was pocked with gopher holes. From time to time a
small striped gopher would whisk nervously from the
mouth of his den to the cover of matted prairie grass, soon
to reappear with cheek food pouches bulging.
“Smart little outfits, the gophers,” the hunter observed. “I
mean the way they have things figured out. Whenever you
come upon a gopher village, you can be sure it will be near
a patch of grain where they can get their food and close by
a creek or slough for water. They’ll not build their towns
near willow clumps, for there’s where the owls or hawks
will be roosting. And you’ll not be finding them near stony
ledges or a pile of rocks where their enemies the snakes
will be hiding ready to snatch them. When these wise little
critters build their towns, they search out the southeast
slope of a knoll that will catch the full sweep of the sun
each day to keep their dens warm and cozy. The winter
blizzards that pound out of the north and west to leave the
windward slopes of the rises frozen solid will only drift
loose powder snow on top of their homes.
“When they dig their dens,” continued the hunter, “do you
know that they do? They slant the runway steeply down for
2 or 3 feet and then double back up near the surface again
where they level off a nice dry shelf. That’s where they lie—
close under the sod roots, out of the wind, warmed by the
sun, near to their food and water, as far as they can get
from their enemies, and surrounded by all their gopher
friends. Yes, sir, they sure have it all planned out!”
“Is our town built on a southeast slope?” the small boy
asked thoughtfully.
“No,” said the hunter, “our town slopes down to the north,
in the teeth of the bitter winter winds and cold as a frosty
gun barrel.” He frowned. “Even in summer the breezes
work against us. When we built the new flax mill, the only
mill for 40 miles, where do you think we put it? We built it
right smack on the only spot where every breeze in the
summertime can catch the smoke from its stack and pour it
across our houses and into our open windows!?”
“At least our town is near the river and water,” said the boy
defensively.
“Yes,” replied the hunter. “But where near the river did we
build our homes? On the low, flat land inside the river bend,
that’s where. And each spring when the snows melt on the
prairie and the river swells, it floods out every cellar in our
town.”
“Gophers would plan things better than that,” the small boy
decided.
“Yes,” said the hunter, “a gopher would be smarter.”
“When gophers plan their homes and towns,” the boy
philosophized, “they seem to do it better than people do.”
“Yes,” mused the hunter, “and so do most of the animals I
know. Sometimes I wonder why.”
 1
THE HUMAN HABITAT AND
SUSTAINABILITY

NASA
P
eople are animals, too. We still retain, and are largely
motivated by, our natural animal instincts. If we are to
plan intelligently, we must acknowledge and accommodate
these instincts; the shortcomings of many a project can be
traced to the failure of the planner to recognize this simple
fact.

The Human Animal

Homo sapiens (the wise one) is an animal (a superior type,
we commonly assume, although neither history nor close
observation altogether support this assumption).
A human standing in the forest, with bare skin, weak teeth,
thin arms, and knobby knees, would not look very
impressive among the other creatures. As an animal, the
bear with powerful jaws and raking claws would clearly
seem superior. Even the turtle seems more cunningly
contrived for both protection and attack, as do the dog, the
skunk, and the lowly porcupine. All creatures of nature,
upon reflection, seem superbly equipped for living their
lives in their natural habitat and for meeting normal
situations. All except the humans.
Lacking speed, strength, and other apparent natural
attributes, we humans have long since learned that we can
best attack a situation with our minds. Truth to tell, we have
little other choice.
We alone of all the animals have the ability to weigh the
factors of a problem and reason out a solution. We are able
to learn not only from our own experiences but also from
the disasters, the triumphs, and the lesser experiences of
untold thousands of our fellows. We can borrow from and
apply to the solution of any problem the accumulated
wisdom of our species.
 Intelligence, by one definition, must be the ability to respond
adaptively to the environment—that is, the ability to plan a
course of action based upon information gained through the
senses.
John Todd Simonds

Our essential strength—the very reason for our survival and

the key to all future achievement—is our unique power of
perception and deduction. Perception (making oneself
aware of all conditions and applicable factors) and
deduction (deriving, through reason, an appropriate means
of procedure) are the very essence of planning.
Down through the dim, chaotic ages, the force of the human
mind has met and mastered situation after situation and has
raised us (through this planning process) to a position of
supremacy over all the other creatures of the earth.

The thought processes of perception-deduction are in turn

implemented by the physical processes of action, reaction, and
interaction. These five dynamic drives form ever-repeating cycles
and spin the intricate webbing of all human life.

We have, in fact, inherited the Earth. This vast globe on

which we dwell is ours, ours to develop further, as an
agreeable living environment. Surely, we, with our twinkling
minds, should by now have created for ourselves a paradise
upon this earth.
Have we? What have we done with our superlative natural
heritage?
We have plundered our forests.
We have ripped at our hills and laid them open to erosion
and ever-deepening gullies.
We have befouled our rivers until even the fish and wildlife
have often been killed or driven off by the stench and
fumes.
Our trafficways are lined with brash commercial
hodgepodge and crisscrossed with senseless friction
points.
We have built our homes tight row on dreary row, with
little thought for refreshing foliage, clean air, or
sunlight.
Looking about us with a critical eye, we find much to
disturb and shock us. Our cluttered highways, sprawling
suburbs, and straining cities offend more often than they
please.

And what is man? Amongst other things he is an organism

endowed with a multiple organ, the brain, supported by the
senses and the glands, in which the formative property of
organic processes is applied to the memory records of
experience. The brain orders its own records, and all mental
processes express this basic activity. Art and science,
philosophy and religion, engineering and medicine, indeed all
cultural activities are based on the ordering of experience
and the exploitation of the resulting design.
Lancelot Law Whyte

We are the victims of our own building. We are trapped,

body and soul, in the mechanistic surroundings we have
constructed about ourselves. Somewhere in the complex
process of evolving our living spaces, cities, and roadways,
we have become so absorbed in the power of machines, so
absorbed in the pursuit of new techniques of building, so
absorbed with new materials that we have neglected our
human needs. Our own deepest instincts are violated. Our
basic human desires remain unsatisfied. Divorced from our
natural habitat, we have almost forgotten the glow and
exuberance of being healthy animals and feeling fully alive.
Many contemporary ailments—our hypertensions and
neuroses—are no more than the physical evidence of
rebellion against our physical surroundings and frustration
at the widening gap between the environment we yearn for
and the stifling, artificial one we planners have so far
contrived.
Life itself is dictated by our moment-by-moment adjustment
to our environment. Just as the bacterial culture in the petri
dish must have its scientifically compounded medium for
optimum development and the potted geranium cutting its
proper and controlled conditions of growth to produce a
thriving plant, so we—as complicated, hypersensitive human
organisms—must have for our optimum development a
highly specialized milieu. It is baffling that the nature of this
ecological framework has been so little explored. Volumes
have been written on the conditions under which rare types
of orchids may best be grown; numerous manuals can be
found on the proper raising and care of guinea pigs, white
rats, goldfish, and parakeets, but little has been written
about the nature of the physical environment best suited to
human culture.
The naturalist tells us that if a fox or a rabbit is snared in a
field and then kept in a cage, the animal’s clear eyes will
soon become dull, its coat will lose its luster, and its spirit
will flag. So it is with humans too long or too far removed
from nature. For we are, first of all, animals.

Everything we have to do to live, nature makes us do with

lust and pleasure.
Seneca
We have learned to unleash the awesome power contained within the atom. Now
we must learn the means by which to control it. USDOE

Human reason is rooted to the earth.

Kenneth Clark

We are creatures of the meadow, the forest, the sea, and the
plain. We are born with a love of fresh air in our lungs, dry
paths under our feet, and the penetrating heat of the sun on
our skin. We are born with a love for the feel and smell of
rich, warm earth, the taste and sparkle of clear water, the
refreshing coolness of foliage overhead, and the spacious
blue dome of the sky. Deep down inside we have for these
things a longing, a desire sometimes compelling, sometimes
quiescent—but always it is there.
It has been proposed by many sages that, other things being
equal, the happiest person is one who lives in closest, fullest
harmony with nature. It might then be reasoned: Why not
restore humans to the woods? Let them have their water
and earth and sky, and plenty of it. But is the primeval forest
—preserved, untouched, or simulated—our ideal
environment? Hardly. For the story of the human race is the
story of an unending struggle to ameliorate the forces of
nature. Gradually, laboriously, we have improved our
shelters, secured a more sustained and varied supply of
food, and extended control over the elements to improve
our way of living.

… and when he looked

At sky or sea, it was with
the testing eyes
Of the man who knows the
weather under his skin,
The man who smells the weather
in the changed breeze
And has tried himself against it
and lived by it.
It is a taut look but there is a
freedom in it.
Stephen Vincent Benét
 We are trapped in the roadside workings of our own machinery. Tom Lamb, Lamb
Studio

These are the Four that are

never content, that have never
been filled since the Dews
began …
Jacola’s* mouth, and the
glut of the Kite, and
the hands of the Ape, and the Eyes
of Man.
Rudyard Kipling
*Jacola is the hyena.

What alternatives, then, are left? Is it possible that we can

devise a wholly artificial environment in which to better
fulfill our potential and more happily work out our destiny?
This prospect seems extremely doubtful. A perceptive
analysis of our most successful ventures in planning would
reveal that we have effected the greatest improvements not
by striving to subjugate nature wholly, not by ignoring the
natural condition or by the thoughtless replacement of the
natural features, contours, and covers with our
constructions, but rather by consciously seeking a
harmonious integration. This can be achieved by modulating
ground and structural forms with those of nature, by
bringing hills, ravines, sunlight, water, plants, and air into
our areas of planning concentration, and by thoughtfully
and sympathetically spacing our structures among the hills,
along the rivers and valleys, and out into the landscape.

Ecological design is simply the effective adaptation to and

integration with nature’s processes.
Sim Van der Ryn Stuart Cowan

The visual clutter of strip roadside development. Barry W. Starke, EDA

 There is that stupendous whole of a constructed environment,
which, like fate, envelops civilized life. It must not be allowed
to conflict seriously with … natural laws.
The ancient idea of a world wisely ordered to function
affords an emotional gratification that has shown eminent
and long tested survival value. It is the inspiration for all
planning and designing.
Richard J. Neutra

We are perhaps unique among the animals in our yearning

for order and beauty. It is doubtful whether any other
animal enjoys a “view,” contemplates the magnificence of a
venerable oak, or delights in tracing the undulations of a
shoreline. We instinctively seek harmony; we are repelled by
disorder, friction, ugliness, and the illogical. Can we be
content while our towns and cities are still oriented to
crowded streets rather than to open parks? While highways
slice through our communities? While freight trucks rumble
past our churches and our homes? Can we be satisfied while
our children on their way to school must cross and recross
murderous trafficways? While traffic itself must jam in and
out of the city, morning and evening, through clogged and
noisy valley floors, although these valley routes should, by
all rights, be green, free-flowing parkways leading into
spacious settlements and the open countryside beyond.

The basic premise of science is that the physical world is

governed by certain predictable rules.

We of contemporary times must face this disturbing fact:

our urban, suburban, and rural diagrams are for the most
part ill-conceived. Our community and highway patterns
bear little logical relationship to one another and to our
topographical, climatological, physiological, and ecological
base. We have grown, and often continue to grow,
piecemeal, haphazardly, without reason. We are dissatisfied
and puzzled. We are frustrated. Somewhere in the planning
process we have failed.
 Genius of place symbolizes the living ecological relationship
between a particular location and the persons who have
derived from it and added to it the various aspects of their
humanness. No landscape, however grandiose or fertile, can
express its full potential richness until it has been given its
myth by the love, works, and arts of human beings.
René Dubos

Sound planning, we can learn from observation, is not

achieved problem by problem or site by site. Masterful
planning examines each project in the light of an inspired
and inspiring vision, solves each problem as a part of a total
and compelling concept, which upon consideration should
be self-evident. Stated simply, a central objective of all
physical planning is to create a more salubrious living
environment—a more secure, effective, pleasant, rewarding
way of life. Clearly, if we are the products of environment as
well as of heredity, the nature of this environment must be a
vital concern. Ideally it will be one in which tensions and
frictions have been in the main eliminated, where we can
achieve our full potential, and where, as the planners of old
Peking envisioned, man can live and grow and develop “in
harmony with nature, God, and with his fellow man.”*1
Such an environment can never be created whole; once
created, it could never be maintained in static form. By its
very definition it must be dynamic and expanding, changing
as our requirements change. It will never, in all probability,
be achieved. But striving toward the creation of this ideal
environment must be, in all land planning and design, at
once the major problem, the science, and the goal.
All planning must, by reason, meet the measure of our
humanity. It must meet the test of our senses: sight, taste,
hearing, scent, and touch. It must also consider our habits,
responses, and impulses. Yet it is not enough to satisfy the
instincts of the physical animal alone. One must satisfy also
the broader requirements of the complete being.
 Our planning professions have a common goal in their aim to
determine, to create, and then keep current optimum
relationships between people and their environments.…
Like the modern medical practitioner, we seek to bring
about in humans a psychosomatic balance, an all-over health
in the whole man. This involves psychological factors as well
as physical and physiological ones.…
The success of a work of design may be soundly evaluated
only by its over-all long-term effect on the healthy, happy
survival of humans. Any other evaluation of architecture,
landscape architecture, or city planning makes little if any
sense.
Norman T. Newton

As planners, we deal not only with areas, spaces, and

materials, not only with instincts and feeling, but also with
ideas, the stuff of the mind. Our designs must appeal to the
intellect. They must fulfill hopes and yearnings. By
empathetic planning, one may be brought to one’s knees in
an attitude of prayer, or urged to march, or even elevated to
a high plane of idealism. It is not enough to accommodate.
Good design must delight and inspire.

Our five senses together give us an organ of acquaintance,

with which we perceive and experience the outer world.
Hans Vetter

Aristotle, in teaching the art and science of persuasion, held

that to appeal to any person an orator must first understand
and know that person. He described in detail the
characteristics of men and women of various ages, stations,
and circumstances and proposed that not only each person
but also the characteristics of each person be considered
and addressed. A planner must also know and understand.
Planning in all ages has been an attempt to improve the
human condition. It has not only mirrored but actively
shaped our thinking and civilization.

Nature
Nature reveals itself to each of us according to our
interests. To the naturalist, nature unfolds a wonderland of
spiderweb, egg mass, and fern frond. To the miner, nature is
the tenacious yet prodigious source of minerals—coal,
copper, tungsten, lead, silver. To the hydroelectric engineer,
nature is an abundant reservoir of power. To the structural
engineer, nature in every guise is an eloquent
demonstration of the universal principles of form creation to
be understood and applied.

Spiral nebula. NASA

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 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN