New Zambesi Trail

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. To publish a book of African travel calls for considerable courage in these days - much more courage than to make the journey itself - and especially when it deals with the Upper Zambesi region, consecrated by the first explorations of Livingstone and the labours of his missionary successors, and since described in detail by some of the best-known scientific travellers from Holub and Serpa Pinto to the late Colonel St. Hill Gibbons.<br><br>However, since the twentieth century opened, a generation has sprung up, to which Central African travel is perhaps less familiar than to their fathers and mothers at the same age. Moreover, rapid changes have taken place; thanks to Christian effort and civil administration, a process has been going on for the last twenty-five years of which many are unaware and which may be called the domestication of Central Africa. Also, while the land and its resources have been so closely examined, the people themselves are by no means so well known, and especially the Barotse, whose country forms the subject of this book. Yet by virtue of our Protectorate, spontaneously invited by the late Paramount Chief Lewanika, we have made ourselves responsible for their actual and future welfare.<br><br>The present volume does not presume to address the learned in African lore who can tap better sources of information. It is written for ordinary readers who may care to know how daily life is lived in a country so lately uncivilized and unsafe.