A LOST WORLD.

Hokitika Guardian, 24 May 1926, Page 4

A LOST WORLD.

EXSLAA-ED PEOPLE OF THE DESERT.

(By Professor E. H. L. Sschwarz, the scientist and explorer, whose discoveries of lost peoples in the Kalahari Deser tof South Africa decently caused r.i sensation).

In the midst of the Kalahari Desert, in South Africa, there is a river which receives the overflow from the tropical swamps farthor north, and at one time was perennial. • Water still flows down tho channel, and occasionally, as during last year, reaches the Kumadow Lake at the end. i Hero dwell a browu race of men, the Aitikalakas, who have built for themselves several large towns, of the existence of which, few know, except the traders and officials of the Bediuanaland Protectorate. They have been harrassed and enslaved for centuries by tho negroid Bantu people, but in this isolated spot, shut off from the rest of the world by vast stretches of waterless sand, they are gradually recovering themselves and forming once more a definite nation. AA'o can only guess at their history, AA’liat little is recorded has been misinterpreted and garbled. But we fnd tint in the 15th century they had made for themselves a very considerable empire, know as Aionomotnpa. They were probably Malays who, alter colonising Aladagascar 2,000 years ago, continued their journey to the mainland, where they mixed with the black races; for in such expeditions few women of their own race usually accompanied the emigrants. Dom Filippe, si Dominican fria, who met the emperor of Afoiiomotapa, tells us his mother was a black woman, from which we gather his father was not black. In 1029 the Portuguese concluded tt treaty with the AJakajakas by which they obtained a grant of land, giving them title to their possessions on the cast coast. A SUPERIOR RACE. , The name AJakalaka means . the People of the Sun, which has no more significance than to imply that they came from the oast and were what we should call Orientals. They brought with them the art of weaving line linen, shot with threads of gold, a material which has been found on the bodies of men. buried in some of the Rhodesian ruins. They possessed the land where these occur, but they took no part in building the Zimbabwe's, nor did they do any mining. Dr Livingstone found them still making a kind of cloth from wild eot-

ton which they dyed with native indigo.

I Their favourite food was rice, of which'they 'had a special variety) which was more pinky in colour and of a more hearty flavour than the Indian grain; this is found to-day along the Zumbesi. Their language was different from the ordinary’ Bantu ones', being much more elegant, according to the early Portuguese, while they lived in steno houses with wooden beams to support the roofs. Then disaster fell upon them. Ihe negroid races of Africa have a habit of setting out on w.hat is known as a lifagane among the Beclynvnas—that is, a marauding expedition accompanied bv their women and children, their (locks and herds, and in fact all their possessions.' This is quite distinct-from the inter-tribal forays in which only the men take part. The movement is usually started by some chief, whose vaulting ambition chafes at inaction, or it has happened a woman has inaugurated the eruption. Anyhow, the people travel about, devastating the country they traverse till they come to some area suitable for their occupation. Up to the loth century the migration had always been from the uortli to the south, lint about this time the Bantu had reached the southern shores of the continent, so that the next section hiving off was obliged to move back along the old tracks.

OYEU WHELMED BY THE BLACKS. It was the return wave of the clack races that led to the undoing of the Makalaka empire; the fierce warriors fell upon these peaceful industrialists and enslaved them, using them most cruelly. They were forbidden to own any cattle higher than tv goat ; the corn they grew was liable to forfeiture, and if they slew a buck they wore only allowed to have the entrails. It is small wonder, therefore, that the Makalakfos have lost all their arts and everything that raised them above the level of the rest of the African natives. The late chief Khama, however, towards the end of his life took them into his tribe, so that now they are followed'to wear a hat as a sign of their emancipation. A hundred years ago Lake Kumadow was a marsh bordered bv palm groves, affording a refuge to the Makalfokas somewhat like their ancestral country. Hero they built their towns, of which Eacops is the largest. The water usually stops here, and the river-bed in Ihe dry season becomes merely a succession of stagnant pools in which crocodiles swarm—fifty-six were counted ill one—so that tb,c women had to push the reptiles aside when scooping water. Mopcpe is another important town, overlooking one of the amazing salt pans of the *Makariklari. The people are very happy among themselves, hut are difficult and avaricious towards the white man. They are wholly unsophisticated, but they yearn for a higher civilisation, for, now they are free, they must wear European clothes. Many are coal black, but the general colour is brown ; the most characteristic fisituro among them, however, is their towering, cylindrical liead.s, totally alien to Africa where the indigenous people, have long heads.