From the Cape to Cairo: The First Traverse of Africa from South to NorthGrogan, Ewart Scott
History
From the Cape to Cairo: The First Traverse of Africa from South to North
Grogan, Ewart Scott
Africa -- Description and travel; Grogan, Ewart Scott, 1874-1967
Amongst the legitimate productions of the cane, they here manufacture
Scotch whisky, the labels and bottles being imported from the home
markets in large quantities. The most important estate is managed by a
French company, superintended by ten Europeans (mainly French). The
system of irrigation is very complete, and the work of cleaning is done
by steam-ploughs, managed, of course, by Scotchmen. Mills are in course
of erection, and the bottles, thistle and all complete, will soon be in
requisition. Three hundred hectares are already planted, and the
Company intend immediately planting five hundred more.
There is another important Sugar Company, owned by the Portuguese and
managed by a Scotchman. The output from its extensive plantations
during the season, which lasts three months, amounts to one hundred and
twenty tons a week.
It is a dreary, hot, monotonous journey.
The river is most uninteresting, of great breadth, with low
grass-covered banks and destitute of trees, except near the delta, where
there are some thriving cocoanut plantations. The stream is cut up by
numerous islands and sandbanks, haunted by vast flocks of geese,
pelicans, and flamingoes.
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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