BEING SOME IMPRESSIONS OF THE TANGANYIKA PLATEAU

NOTE BY SIR ALFRED SHARPE

I have been asked by the Authors to write a short introduction to their work, which deals with one of the most fascinating districts of Tropical Africa. We read in these days many books on Africa, most of which contain the impressions gathered by travellers passing through on fleeting visits. Their opinions are the result of information hastily gleaned from others, and are in many cases quite unreliable. To get at the bottom of things in Africa there is only one method, long continued residence, backed by a proper sympathy with native ideas. The Authors of this book have spent a considerable portion of their lives in the the land and among the peoples they write of, and no one could be better qualified than they to deal with the subjects thy have taken in hand.

I knew the Tanganyika Plateau well twenty years ago: it is a charming land, cut off, as the Authors state, from all that we understand as civilisation, where everything is peaceful, the natives kindly and willing, the climate delightful and fairly healthy.

How long will this remain so?

The Plateau lies on the backbone of Africa, along which the existence of valuable minerals is being every year more clearly proved. The Rand, Southern Rhodesia and Katanga all lie on this continental watershed, and even the distant Kilo gold mines , Albert Nyanza. it will probably not be long before the scheme outlined by the Authors on page 328, of a line of rail and water communication from the sea coast, Beira, to Tanganyika is carried out thus giving an outlet with cheap transport for the Tanganyika Plateau and Northern Katanga.

Meantime the Authors of this volume give a description of native life on the Tanganyika Plateau as it now exists, minute, reliable, and deeply interesting

18th September 1911.