At Senna there are a few miserable huts, and a few yet more miserable Portuguese, and at Songwe there is an Indian settlement, where there is some trade from the interior.
On reaching the Shiré we were transferred to an animated tea-tray, by courtesy called a steamer, which carried us to Chiromo. The food for five Europeans for two and a half days consisted of one ancient duck, three skinny fowls, and a few tins of sardines. There was no bread, butter, milk, or Worcester sauce, without which life, or rather native cookery, is intolerable. Luckily, at the villages on the way we were able to buy fowls, eggs, and tomatoes.
Before reaching Chiromo we put in at the first B.C.A. post, Port Herald, where dusky Napoleons ponder over wild orgies of the past. A broad road planted with shade trees leads up to the collector's house, and cross-roads, similarly planted, give quite a pleasant appearance to the place, backed in the distance by a high mountain.
Chiromo is laid out at the junction of the Ruo and Shiré rivers, while on the north-west side the station is hemmed in by the vast Elephant Marsh, now a closed game preserve, owing to the inconsiderate slaughter in time past. Lions can be heard almost every night, and the day previous to our arrival a lion appeared in the town in broad daylight, and carried off a native. Though the available population turned out to slay, he escaped untouched. Many shots were fired at him from many varieties of guns, and the range varied from five to five hundred yards. But still he wandered round, the least excited individual in the place. Eventually the Nimrod of Chiromo, who arrived late, hurt his feelings by tumbling off a tree on to his back. This was too much, and he majestically stalked off into the Marsh, wondering at the inscrutable ways of men.
Leopard spoor was also a common sight in the street in the morning, while in the Ruo the crocodiles lived an easy life, with unlimited black meat at their command near the bathing-places.
From its position, the town is the inland port of British Central Africa, and with the fast-growing coffee industry will become a place of considerable importance. Already the building plots command a high price, and stands are being eagerly bought up by the African Flotilla Company and Sharrers' Transport Company, who are rapidly ousting the African Lakes Corporation from their position of hitherto unquestioned monopolists. There are also several German traders who display considerable activity, apparently with satisfactory results, and there are rumours of a coffee combination, financed by a prominent German East Coast firm, making their headquarters here.
A large estate on the right bank of the Shiré, called Rosebery Park, is owned by the African Flotilla Company, which makes excellent bricks, and opposite the town a fibre-extracting company has started work. The company has obtained Foulke's patent fibre-cleaning machine, and a concession of the fibre-gathering rights over all Crown lands, and another similar concession in the Portuguese territory.
The plant employed is Sanseveira, of which there are about twenty varieties, the most common in the neighbourhood being S. cylindrica and S. guiniensis; the former, owing to the greater ease with which it can be worked, being the most valuable. The length of leaf is 3 to 6 ft., and the diameter about ¾ in. I found it growing in immense quantities on the plains round Chiperoni.
The treatment is very simple. The green stuff is put over rollers, which take it past a rapidly revolving brush under a strong jet of water. The resulting fibre is then dried in the shade, tied into bundles, and is ready bleached for the market. Consequently the cost of production is very low. The fibre is fine, strong, and clean, and the waste is very small, the proportion of fibre to reed being 4 per cent. The strength is estimated at two and a half times that of the best manilla.
The cost of fuel (wood) to run one engine for a day is only four shillings, and as the fibre needs no cleaning, only one process is necessary.