AFRICA’S LOST TOWNS

Hokitika Guardian, 11 December 1925, Page 4

AFRICA’S LOST TOWNS

The Kalahari, the vast desert lietween the Orange and the Zambesi rivers, where Pro lessor Schwarz is i exported to have discovered new towns and people, was once a fertile land containing iin.men.se lakes, hut to-day is largely a sandy scrub-covered waste, where no surl'aic water exists in the drier months of the year. In the middle Kalahari are two great depressions called N’garni and Maknrikari, from the lakes which once filled them and originally covered thousands ol square miles' They are joined by the Okavango, Kwando and Zambesi rivers. Ii is supposed that this mighty inland sea hurst its bonds and poured its waters over the 1 ictoria halls. Livingstone, who discovered N’gam.i in 1850. was the first to realise the existence of the earlier and grunter lakes. Even in his day N’gami covered many square miles, writes Colonel .1. C. I>- Statham in tlie " Daily Mail.” To-dav it is a grass flat, and the Maknrikari, which held large numbers of hippopotami and crocodiles, has Peon ilry for many years. When marching just north of N’gam.ihind three years ago 1 came across niinicious a.nd curiously parallel old river beds, vestiges of the greater inland

The Kalahari is slowly drying up and may become a second Sahara, and as this desiccation is nll'erting neighbouring countries in South Alrica. Schvaiz advocates the reclamation of the Kalahari h.v damming two of the rivers which once fed the great lakes in such a manner as partly to restore them. 11l such a < (inntry il is possible that collections ol houses in such ntiniheis

i\s to merit the term “ town ” may have existed when the country was well watered—and their ruins may have been covered and lost in scrub, jungle and sand.

Extensive stone-huill ruins have been humd through Mozambique and South Rhodesia which arc supposed to he the work of early Arabs and possibly Phoenicians, who built them when searching for th<' gold of Ophir. They may have penetrated to the Kalahari when it was better watered, though this is unlikely, and (lie "towns” mentioned as having been louud in the Kalahari are more likely to lie the numerous and often large ruined villages abandoned through drought or inter-tribal wars. The population of the Kalahari has greatlv ilei reused, hut even in 1021 there were 17.00(1 people and perhaps 1 .‘I!,00(1 cattle in N’gainiliiml alone, where the natives are mainly Makubas, one of the Maknlaka or slave tribes, and their overlords, the Ratawana. Roth have hitherto always been looked upon as African Bantu negroes, with no affinities to the Sakalnva Madagascan tribe as the .Schwarz report suggests, for the Madagascar people are mainly of Malny-Polynesian stock. Just, to the north of N’gamiftind is another Bantu tribe, the Alambiikiishu. whose chief is a great rainmaker who guards a mysterious rain-making pot. and is said to use a baby’s Wood in tiis raiii-muking medicine. The country and people in N’gamihmd are very interesting, hut" scarcely unknown, for there is an English magistrate resident there, and a partial survov has boon made ami published in tiio 4 ‘ OeufxrnpliiiMtl .Tonriinl.”