Another mouse-trap is made of a hollowed pumpkin, or the fruit of the kigelia (mvunguti) tree, which looks like a huge woody cucumber. It is baited with roasted maize or ground-nuts, and has a noose at the opening kept stretched by a bent stick, much on the same principle as the msampa.
The Apodzo, already mentioned, hunt the hippopotamus from canoes. Three go out at a time, with two men in each—one to paddle, and one to throw the harpoon. This consists of a strong barbed head, loosely inserted into a wooden handle to which it is attached by a stout cord, wound closely round the whole length, and uncoiling when the weapon is thrown; so that, when the wounded brute dives, the wood floats and shows his whereabouts. When he has been struck three times, the ropes are gathered up and twisted together, being then strong enough to hold him, and slowly hauled in till he can be despatched with spears.
Although not to be reckoned as hunting, the capture of wild honey, and of swarming white ants (neither an unimportant item in the native larder), may be mentioned here. The wild bees (some kinds of which, but not all, are stingless) make their nests in hollow trees, which are frequently pointed out to passing hunters or travellers by the small bird known as the honey-guide. They make a fire, cut a hole in the tree large enough to pass the arm through, smoke the bees out with lighted wisps of grass, and carry away the honeycombs in pieces of bark. The River people hang hives on trees—small cylindrical boxes made of bark, in which the bees build,—and remove them when full.
White ants, when they swarm, are fat yellow insects, an inch or more in length, which fill the European with unconquerable loathing, when they make a sudden irruption into the house, blunder into the lamps, crack the glasses, and get down the back of your neck in the dark. It is the small and much more insignificant workers who do the damage in houses, eating wood-work and plastering walls with their galleries; but they do not excite the same antipathy. The native, however, regards the inswa in a very different light; in fact, one of the Blantyre catechists has been known to use them with great effect in a sermon, as a simile for the delights of this world! Sometimes a large ant-heap is found close to or actually among the huts of a village; it never struck me at the time to ask whether this was accidental, or whether the responsible person had purposely located his abode close to this desirable game preserve. Passing by such a place one day soon after the rains had begun, I found two or three youths busy catching termites. They had dug in the heap a short trench, which, as they had roofed it over with grass, looked for all the world like a grave; and into this the swarming insects collected. At one end was a round opening with a cover, which was lifted off from time to time, and the inswa taken out by handfuls. They are roasted over the fire in an earthen pot, ‘like coffee,’ said my informant.
FISHING
Fish are caught with rod and line, nets, traps, and weirs, and sometimes speared. There are two kinds of fish-spear—the momba, with a straight point for striking the fish, and the barbed chikolongwe, or gaff, for hooking it out. Weirs are usually made at the mouth of a stream; a fence is built right across with only one opening left in it, and behind it is placed a large mono, or basket-trap, constructed on the principle of a lobster-pot, and perhaps five feet long. The weir in the illustration is at Ngofi, on the eastern side of Lake Nyasa.
Smaller traps of the same kind are sunk in the water, like lobster-pots. Nets are sometimes set overnight and anchored with a couple of stones, the upper edge being kept on the top of the water by a line of floats. Other nets are cast from canoes; sometimes they are hauled in and the fish scooped on board with the canoe-balers, sometimes the ropes are taken on shore and the net hauled up on the beach like our seines. This is done with the largest kind of net, requiring twenty men to handle it. Another is chiefly used at night: the net is lowered between two canoes, while a third is paddled towards it with a lighted torch on board to attract the fish. The men alternately show the torch and knock loudly on the sides of the canoe, which seems to daze the fish and drive them towards the net. Hand-nets are also used, like shrimping-nets, with handles working over each other scissor-wise, but kept in place by a cross-bar which is not in the European implement. Nets are generally made of the Bwazi fibre. Net-making and canoe-patching are (or were) the two great industries of Likoma island; and the whole lakeside population is more or less engaged in fishing.
Fishing with rod and line may often be seen on the Shiré, where, in some places, small platforms are built out from the bank, so that the angler can cast his hook in deep water and free of reeds or bushes. The hook is large, not barbed, but bent in towards the shank, to make it more difficult to slip off; it is made of iron wire and sharpened on a stone. The bait is usually maize-paste. After throwing the line, the angler strikes the top of the water sharply a few times with his rod, to agitate it, and call the attention of the fish. Poison is sometimes put into a pool to stupefy the fish, when they come to the surface and can be gathered out of the water by hand; a species of euphorbia, and a large shrub (ombwe) with bean-like pods and white blossoms, are used for this purpose, and can often be seen growing in the villages.
CANOE-MAKING
Canoes are made wherever there are trees of sufficient size growing where they can be brought down to the water without too much difficulty. ‘The tree,’ however, ‘may be chosen far up on the hills, in which case it is drawn down by great numbers of men with ropes of thick creepers. A great thickness of bottom is left for the purpose, and rollers of bamboo or stick are spread across the path to facilitate the dragging.’ The commonest form of canoe is the ‘dug-out,’ made from a single log of mbawa or some other hard wood, but there are some made of a large sheet of bark sewn at the ends. Hewing out a canoe with axe and adze is slow work, and it is no wonder that it is considered matter for rejoicing and brewing of beer when finished.