People of Africa | Page 8

have learned to be very brave and fearless and strong. They are patient, and endure great hardships without grumbling. They love music, and often sing as they ride over the silent sand. In the evening they gather round the fire to tell stories of what happened long ago. The people of North Africa are all Arabs or Egyptians or Berbers, with olive complexions and smooth, dark hair as a rule. Next we shall read about the very dark-skinned races who live farther south, in Central Africa, where the sun is much hotter.
IV ----------- UGANDA, AN AFRICAN KINGDOM
1. Central Africa
In the last chapter we read that the Arab merchants crossed the desert to buy ivory and goat-skins from the people who lived farther south. In these next two chapters we shall read about these people south of the desert. Their land lies in the very middle of Africa, and so is called Central Africa. It is a beautiful country, with many rivers and great lakes and mountains. Central and West Africa are also the very hottest part of this continent. Now when plants have a lot of water and a lot of sun they grow very quickly, and so Central Africa, with its hot sun and its great rivers and lakes, is a land of great forests. In these forests there are lions and leopards, elephants, and deer; and ivory and skins, as well as gold, have for many years been sold by the Central Africans to the traders from the desert. On the eastern side of this country there are more mountains, lakes, and small rivers; on the western side there are great rivers, all of which join one very large one called the Congo. In this chapter we shall read about some of the people who live on the eastern side on the shores of the largest of all the lakes--the one called Victoria Nyanza. These people are called the Baganda, and their country is Uganda.
2. The Baganda
The Baganda are dark-skinned Africans. They all belong to one tribe and speak one language, but all around them are other Africans belonging to different tribes and speaking different languages. About sixty years ago, when the grandfathers of the men who are alive now were still young, the first Europeans went to Uganda. Until that time the tribes in Central Africa had spent most of their time fighting one another, killing many and making others slaves. Some of these slaves were sold to the Arabs to take away to Zanzibar and across the sea, or to take across the desert to Egypt. Some tribes were much stronger than others, and some of these drove everyone else out of the country they had chosen for themselves and made a kingdom of it. One of these strong tribes was the Baganda. Others liked to wander from place to place, but the Baganda chose to settle down on the shores of the great Lake Victoria Nyanza, and to stay there always.
When Europeans went to Uganda they found the Baganda had a king to whom they paid great honour. The king had many officers under him. Some of these were the chiefs of different parts of the kingdom. Others had special work to do--one to hear all the lawsuits and to settle disputes, another to command the army. Others had to work in the king's household, to wait on his wives and children, or to beat the big drum to call the people when the king wanted them, or to take care that no one entered the palace unless the king wished them to do so. But whatever their work was, all the chiefs and officers and people honoured and obeyed the king, and, because in this way everyone was ready to fight or to work for the king and the rest of the nation, the Baganda were one of the strongest and wisest of all the African peoples.
The old dress of these people was a cloth, not sewn, but simply twisted tight round their body under their arms, and reaching nearly to the ground. Sometimes it was fastened also by a belt round the waist. The cloth is made from the bark of certain trees soaked in water and beaten hard for many days until it is soft and thin and strong like woven cloth. Their houses were round and built of reeds, with steep roofs which nearly reached to the ground. The smaller villages had only a few people in them, everyone in each village being related to the rest. But the Baganda also had big towns, the biggest to-day being Mengo, where the king lives. Here there were people gathered together for the king's work, and many others brought food and bark-cloth to market to sell. The houses of the king and the