Perth Amboy evening news., 1923-03-14
Geographic News
Bulletins by the
National Geographic Society
HOME oE. pRouIBITION

| HOME OF PROllBIIlON
african history crops out in
queer places; in The rock tomb OF
J for example, and
In gain IN the death of King khama.,
OF Bamangwato, Bechuanaiano,
saws bulletin from the Washington,
iD. C., headquarters of the National
Geographic Society.
! "Ihere is some accounting for
Pharoah Tut, but II one were seek
ing the greatest native of Africa,
| lie would likely looM last in the half
mapped, thinly-people, malaria-rid-
den and beast-infested region cir
cled by the union of South Africa,
the Rhodesias and Southwest
Africa.
| "A glance at map of Africa will
show these border countries be-
sprinkled with towns, populous and
| historic, whose sons often attain
| world fame. Already they are
| netted with railways and more are
building.
| A South Africa Sahara
"On the other nand Bechuana-
| land is a South African Sahara in
IT'S lack of settlements and railways.
lThe Cape-to-Cairo line crosses its
southern frontier at Mafeking, and
elbows it's way alopS It's eastern
| boundary until It emerges again at
Plumtree.
! "Tha latter name sounds like
| town of our own west in Bret Harte
days, and appropriately SO. For
west of Plumtree stretch the bad
tiands of Bechuanaland-a vast
waste of salt marshes with the Great
| Makalakari Salt Lake in the fore
ground and farther inland the Lake
| Ngami country. Here, in the kala-
hari desert live a people who have
been called the most backward in
Africa. And this desert, it has been
said, is their fortress whose walls
are the want of water
Through numberless isolated
centuries the Bakalaharl have de-
yeloped sort OF sixth sense Tor
water finding. They draw it through
reeds from near-surface streams, by
suction, and use gourds and ostrlch-
| egg shells to collect the precious
fluid.
ITO the south If Bechuanaland'
Great Salt Lake, not far from the
great trunk line railways dusty
Bechuanaland sector, nor from the
crossing of Capricorn and the Linn
lropo, is Serowe, native metropolis of
the Bamangwato branch OF the
Countrv's Bantu-Negroid peoples.
northern desert dwellcrs, Bamang-
lwato's patriarch still can tell of
times when sickly children were
killed, bid banes were strangled,
land girls were introduced to woman
hood by Spartan tests and Bachana-
liam practices.
Among the tribe was born, about
1890, bright black boy who, at the
Iage OF twelve met David Living
stone. How one contact with civ
iliZation affected this black son of
9. backward tribe is u rare adventure
i'll human nature. khama is the
one native of Africa whose biog-
raphy is worth the writing, one
writer asserts.
StickIeK 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
sions of the Beers and he beat back
Ifis neighbor Matabele tribesmen so
| effectually that MS people there
latter were immune from their pc
riodic raids.
"khama's conversion was no emo
tional or mystical camp meeting af-
fair. He seized upon a few prac-
, tlcally virtues and enforced them sc
literally that visitors to his clean
prosperous capital usually are
amazed. He first set about making
! his people sober and honest. Even
missionaries are said to have re-
monstrated with him about his sud
den banning of native beer; but the
grim old autocrat said that some
5 beer might be all right for white
folks, but no beer was the only sal
walton of his tribe.
4 Many stories are told Of his
? rigid honesty. On one occasion he
l sold, for a good price, horse which
died few days after delivery to the
purchaser. Khama returned the
purchase price, saying that his in
: quiries showed that the horse had
contracted the fatal illness while in
his possession.
y Regulates Commodity Prices
"a visitor to his domain wrote
'Khama regulates the price of the
= goat you buy; and the milk vendor
dare not ask more than the regula.
tion price, nor can you get it fol
:, less. He has put stop to the exist.
Z Ience of witch doctors. He pervades
everything in his town. He is al
ways on horseback, visiting fields
, 1.-The stores, and tho outlying kraals
II lie Is VerltaDle Iatner OF MS peo
tpie, curious and unaccountablt
cutcrop of mental power and In
a tegrity among degraded and pow
: erless people,
THE whole of Bechuanaland, al
Iarea somewhat larger than Texas
affords a lesson of conservation. IT.
= dryness is attributed, in large part
to the continual cutting away of th'
trees. Most of it's rivers are inter
mittent; many of them seep away il
Is the desert stretches. Fish burrov