The heart of Africa, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Georg August Schweinfurth

Towards the end of August the sorghum-harvest commenced with the pulling of the light crop of the four-monthly sort, which had been sown in the latter part of April. But the general ingathering of the heavier varieties, which contribute chiefly to the supply of corn, did not take place until the beginning of December, after the rainy season was over. In Sennaar and Taka, sorghum requires five or six months to come to maturity, but in this district it rarely takes less than eight months. Both the early and late sorts commonly attain a height of nearly fifteen feet; the stalks of the former remain quite green, but the reedy stems of the latter become so strong and woody, that they are used for fences to divide one enclosure from another. Some of the varieties are scarcely inferior to the regular sugar millet (Sorghum saccharatum) in producing an abundance of saccharine matter; these are known to the negroes as well as to the Arabians of the Soudan, who chew the straw and so express the juice. The Bongo and the Dyoor express the pulp by means of wooden mortars, and boil it till it has the consistency of syrup. From this concoction I was able to procure a spirit which was far more palatable than what I should have obtained by distilling the sorghum itself.

The Deloo.

Both varieties of the common sorghum,[26] which here abound in all their minor differences of colour, shape, and size of grain, yield well-nigh a dozen different descriptions for the market at Khartoom. The standard value is fixed by the Fatareetah, a pure white thin-skinned grain, which also is grown by the negroes in the Seriba.

All negro races that depend upon agriculture for their subsistence consider the cultivation of sorghum most important. Of the people among which I travelled, the Bongo, the Dyoor, and the Mittoo, were examples of this. On the other hand, among the southern Niam-niam and the Monbuttoo this cereal is quite unknown.

LIMITATION OF GRAIN PRODUCE.

I could not help being astonished at the length of time which most of the kinds take to ripen. In some fields a portion of the stubble is left intentionally ungrubbed until the next season; this will die down, but, after the first rain, it sprouts again from the root, and so a second gathering is made from the same stem. No loosening of the soil is ever made, and this perhaps accounts in a degree for the tardiness of the growth. With the small spades, of which I have already spoken, shallow holes are sunk in the ground at intervals of about a yard: into these is dropped the corn, which then is trodden down by the foot. It is only during the first few months that any labour at all is given to the fields, just to remove from the surface of the soil the multitudes of weeds which will spring up. These weeds are gathered into heaps, and form the only manure which is employed in this lavish laboratory of nature. Never more than once is this weeding repeated; it is done by the women and children; and the corn is then left entirely to take its chance until it is time to gather it. On account alike of its tall growth and of its luxuriant habit, the men are careful not to plant it too thickly. The country does not offer many materials for manuring the land; if, therefore, greater application of labour or of skill should succeed in doubling the yield of every stem, there would ultimately be no gain. The soil, which already in many places fails after the second year, would only be exhausted so much the sooner. Such being the case, every project of ameliorating the condition of this people by enlarging their crop is quite an illusion; the land could not sustain a larger number than that which already resides upon it.

In my garden I made several attempts to sow wheat, but without much success. Probably I should have prospered better if I could have obtained some European seed: mine was from Khartoom, and it is very likely that the conditions under which it had been grown, amidst the flooded fields of the Nile Valley, on a soil far more soddened than that of this district, had been very injurious to the grain.

Very unwisely, not one of the Seriba governors has ever made an attempt to introduce into the district the culture of rice, for which the low marshy fields, otherwise useless, seem, very admirably adapted; but the people are not to be taught; vain the endeavour to initiate them even into a rational system of burning charcoal; and as to the culture of rice, nothing throughout the whole of Nubia was known about it. On the contrary, the expeditions which have set out from Zanzibar, and which have explored districts where the climate is not dissimilar to that of which we speak, have introduced the cultivation of rice over a very considerable area. The finger of nature itself seems to point out the propriety of not neglecting this product; in the whole district south of the Gazelle the wild rice of Senegal grows quite freely, and this I always found of a better quality than the best kinds of Damietta. During the rains the wild rice (Oryza punctata) environs many a pool with its garland of reddish ears, and seems to thrive exceedingly, but it never occurs to the sluggish natives to gather the produce that is lost in the water; and it is only because the Baggara and some of the inhabitants of Darfoor had saved some quantity, that I contrived to get my small supply.