Livingstone, when first visiting the Shiré Highlands in 1859, found that ‘Iron ore is dug out of the hills, and its manufacture is the staple trade of the southern highlands. Each village has its smelting-house, its charcoal-burners and blacksmiths. They make good axes, spears, needles, arrow-heads, bracelets, and anklets, which are sold at surprisingly low rates; a hoe over two pounds in weight is exchanged for calico of about the value of fourpence.’ In 1876 there was a smelting-furnace within a few hundred yards of Blantyre station, and ‘a smithy in an old hut beside the station was daily patronised.’ The furnaces have mostly disappeared, and the smiths do not often make hoes or axes, preferring to hammer scraps of imported iron—for instance, pieces of the hoops from packing-cases—into small knives or the like. I made a rough sketch of the smithy beside the bwalo at Ntumbi; it was in a very dilapidated condition, and I never saw the smith at work there, though he sold me a small razor of his own manufacture, which is now in the Ethnological Museum at Cambridge. The forge contained the usual fireplace, with a ridge of earth banked up round it, rather higher than the ordinary fireplace in a hut. On the further side of the hollow were two upright clay-pipes, into which the two openings of the goat-skin bellows were fixed when at work; they communicated below with another pipe opening into the midst of the embers. A split bamboo is used as tongs, and the smith keeps a pot of water beside him to quench the ends when they take fire. The anvil is a flat stone, and a large stone is used as the forge-hammer; iron hammers are used in later stages of the process. The characteristic Nyanja knife is two-edged, with carved wooden handle and sheath, as shown in the illustration. The one shown in the illustration is not a very elaborate specimen, but they are sometimes beautifully carved, and of all sizes, from six inches and under to about a foot, but the tiny ones sometimes seen are only made for sale to travellers as curios, on the Lower Shiré and Zambezi. These knives serve every possible purpose of a pocket-knife, and are worn round the neck, or under the left arm, by a string passing over the right shoulder, or, if small, tied on the upper left arm. The sheath is made with a projecting ear or loop for the string to pass through.
1. “Mbengo” (“Angoni Handkerchief”) and Nyanja Sheath-Knife
2. Yao Knife, with Handle of Hippopotamus Ivory
In the Ethnological Museum at Cambridge
The Yaos prefer another style of knife, with one edge, and two or three grooves on the blade; the specimen in the cut has a handle of hippopotamus ivory.
The illustration shows another product of the smith’s art—that known as an ‘Angoni handkerchief’; it is worn round the neck, and used (with a vigour calculated to strike amazement into the unsophisticated beholder) to remove the results of toil from the forehead, or even to perform the ordinary office of a handkerchief for the nose.
Wood-carving is of a primitive sort, though often very neatly done. The patterns on the knife-sheaths above mentioned mostly consist of triangles, chevrons, and lozenges, and are not nearly so elaborate as some specimens of Mashona and Zambezi work. Indeed, the former seem, at least in some cases, to have originated in unskilful copying of the interlaced pattern usually called Celtic, which is found in some of the latter, and probably introduced in the first instance by the Portuguese. The carving on blackened wood, which is very popular among the Yaos, is confined to the same elementary designs, and is done with very little relief, and no attempt at modelling of surface, the only object being to show the white figures on the dark ground.
Pillows or neck-rests of the Mashona or ancient Egyptian pattern are in use, but I never saw one being made, nor came across a new one. But it must be remembered that the people of the Shiré Highlands were, ten years ago, comparatively unused to the experience of a settled life, in which you can begin an important piece of carving with a reasonable prospect of being able to finish it. The country west of the Shiré has not been quite free from alarms and excursions for even so long as that. Quaint figures of birds are sometimes attempted by adventurous artists, but these are not very common, and I do not even remember coming across a stick with the top carved into the likeness of a human head, except the tsanchima staff mentioned in a previous chapter, which must have been of considerable age.