The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-03-18
SOUTHERN AFRICA HOLDS WONDE ERSTO
 RIVAL KING TUT"
People in Malaria Ridden Region Catching Up With
 Worlds Progress

WASHINGTON, D. C., March IT, African history crops out in queer places; in the rock tomb of Tutankh- amen. for example, and again in the death of King Khama of Bomang wato, Bechua2alard." says a bulletin from the Washington headauarters ot the National Geographic society.
 There is some accounting for Pharaoh Tut but if one were seek ing the greatest native of Africa he would likely look last in the half mapped. thinly-peopled. malaria-rid- den and beast-infested region circled by the Union of South Africa, the Rhodesias, and southwest Africa.
 A glance at map of Africa will show these border countries be- sprinked with towns, populous and historic, whose sons often attain world Tame. Already they are net building.
 A South Africa Sahara.
 On the other hand Bechuanaland is South African Sahara in it's lack of settlements and railways, The ern frontier at Mafeking. and elbows it's way along it's eastern boundary until it emerges again at Plumtree.
 "The latter name sounds like a town Of our own west in bret Harte days, and appropriately so. For west of Plumtree stretch the bad lands of Bechuanaland-a vast waste of salt marshes with the Great Makalakari Salt Lake in the foreground and far ther inland the Lake Ngami country. Here. in the Kalahari desert. live a people who have been called the most backward in Africa. And this des- ert. 1t has been said. is their fortress whose walls are the want of water
 Through numberless isolated cen turies the Bakalahari have devel- oped a sort of sixth sense for water finding. They draw it through reeds from near-surface streams. by sue tion. and use gourds and ostrich-egg shells to collect the precious fluid.
 "To the south of Bechuanaland's s Great Salt Lake. not far from the great trunk line railways dusty Bechunaland sector. nor from the crossing of Capricorn and the Linn popo. is Serowe. native metropolis of the Bomangwato branch .of the country's Bantu-Ncgroid peoples.
 Much further advanced than the northern desert dwellers. Bamang- wato's patriarchs still can tell Of killed. blind babes were strangled. and girls were introduced to woman hood by Spartan tests and Bacchana- Han practices.
 Among this tribe was born, about 1880, bright black boy who. at the age of 12. met David Livingstone. How one contact with civilization affected this black son of back ward tribe is rare adventure in human nature. Khama is the one native of Africa whose biography is worth the writing. one writer as serts."
 stickIer For sobriety
 "Khama ruled as an autocrat in peace because he had been mighty in war. He obtained aid from the British government against incur his neighbor Matabeie tribesmen so effectuaily that his people there after were immune from their pe- riodic raids.
 'Khama's conversion was no emo tional or mystical camp meeting af- fair. He seized upon a few practical virtues and enforced them so literal ly that visitors to his clean. pros- porous capital usually are amazed. He first set about making his people sober and honest. Even missionaries gre said to have demonstrated with him about his sudden banning of native beer; but the grim old auto crat said that some beer might be all right for white folks but no beer was the only salvation of his tribe.
 Many stories are told of his rigid honesty. On one occasion he sold. for a good price, a horse which died a few days after delivery to the pur- chaser Khama returned the purchase price. saying that his inquiries show.l that the horse had contract- ed the fatal illness while still in his possession.
 O o O
 Commodity Prices
 A visitor to his domain wrote. 'Khama regulates the price of the goat you buy and the milk vender dare not ask more than the regu- iation price, nor can you get 1t for less. lie has put a stop to the exist ence of witch doctors. He pervades everything in his town. He is always on horseback, visiting the fields, the stores, and the outlying kraals. He is q veritable- father of his people, a curious and unaccountable outcrop of mental power and integrity among q degraded and powerless people,.
 The whole of Bechuanaland, an area somewhat larger than Texas, affords lesson in conservation. Its dlyncss is attributed in large pat to the continual cutting away of its