People of Africa

by Edith A. How

5. The Desert Peoples (c) Traders

The third kind of people who are found in the Sahara are the traders. These, like the Bedouin, are Arabs, but often their homes are in some town, either on the edge of the desert or in Egypt. They travel from the great North African towns and from Egypt, across the desert to the rich countries south of it, where the dark-skinned people live. There, south of the Sahara, they buy ivory and dyed goat-skins and other things in exchange for cloth and beads, and return with their merchandise to the northern towns again. Many years ago they used to capture slaves, but they cannot often do so now, because the Christian Europeans try to stop trading in slaves. The journeys of the traders take many months, because often they have to go by a long road in order to find water. So they travel from oasis to oasis seeking shade and water. Sometimes they have to ride three or four days to reach the next drinking-place. Then they have to carry water for themselves in goat-skins. The camels can live for a few days without water, though they get very weak. For this reason, everyone who makes long journeys in the Sahara has to ride on a camel. A horse can travel more quickly, but he, like a man, must have water every day. So the camel is sometimes called the "Ship of the Desert," because he, best of all, can carry men across the waterless sand. When traders travel across the desert with their merchandise, they are very much afraid of the desert robbers, who steal what they can from travellers. So they journey in large companies called "caravans," with a paid guide to show them the best and the quickest way from oasis to oasis, and with many men armed with guns and spears paid to ride along by the side of the camels carrying the merchandise, and to fight if robbers come to steal. These Sahara robbers are very bad people, who fight, and steal all they can get, and always kill everyone they can. So everyone who crosses the Sahara has to be ready to fight for his life as well as his property. The desert is so vast, and has so many hills and hiding-places, that it is easy for the robbers to get away after they have robbed a caravan. Then, as silence once more falls on the place of the struggle, the cries of the jackals and hyenas and vultures are heard, as they come from miles away drawn by the smell of blood. Swiftly they gather to feed on the bodies of the slain, and soon the wind blows the sand smooth and clean, where a few hours before it was trampled and stained with blood. Perhaps only a few whitened bones remain to show what has happened.

6. The North of Africa

So we have learned something about the people who live in the North of Africa. In Egypt, the land of the great River Nile, the people can grow rich and prosperous. They have time to learn, but, except the Copts, many of whom are goldsmiths, they seem to have quite forgotten how to make the beautiful things the old Egyptians made. In the desert, the Sahara, there is little water, and life is very hard. All day people must work to get enough for food and clothes. It is a land without a king and without laws, where each must fight for himself. Yet these people, on their long journeys through the waterless waste, 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
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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.