Alfred St Hill Gibbons

“ Very black, tall in stature, deep in chest and comparatively speaking refined in feature, a Barotse is readily distinguishable amidst a mixed group of natives. Being numerically small they form an oligarchy in which, with few exceptions, each man holds rank in a chieftainship of which there are three grades. Next to the chiefs rank their descendants who have not themselves acquired chief’s rank and hold an intermediate position as freeborn ”

“ The greater part of the country is a British protectorate, forming part of Rhodesia. The Barotse are the paramount tribe in the region of the Upper Zambezi basin, but by popular usage the name is also applied to contiguous subject tribes, Barotseland being the country over which the Barotse paramount chief exercises authority. ”

“ The Barotse proper are comparatively few in number, but as is inferred from the fact that for many generations they have held in sway a country two and a half times the size of Great Britain, they are the intellectual and physical superiors of the vast majority of the negro races of Africa. ”

“ Excluding the ridge of high ground running east and west which, culminating at a height of 5000 ft., forms the Congo-Zambezi water-parting, the extreme east (Batoka) and the district in the immediate vicinity of the Victoria Falls (q.v.) throughout which, with local variations, a red laterite clay predominates, the main physical features of Barotseland may be described as a series of heavy white sand undulations covered with subtropical forest vegetation. ”

“ Under the Chartered Company’s rule considerable progress has been made in the development of the resources of the country, especially in opening up the mining districts in the north. The seat of the administration, Kalomo, is on the “Cape to Cairo” railway, about midway between the Zambezi and Kafue rivers. The railway reached the Broken Hill copper mines, 110 m. N. of the Kafue in 1906, and the Belgian Congo frontier in 1910. From Lobito Bay in Portuguese West Africa a railway was being built in 1909 which would connect with the main line near the Congo frontier. ”

“ There seems to be little or no indication of mineral wealth in the white sand area, but in the north and east there is not only every prospect of a great agricultural and pastoral future but also of considerable mining development. ”

“ These valleys, which towards the close of the wet season become inundated, afford rich cattle pasture, the succulence of which prevents cattle losing condition towards the end of the dry season, as is the case in many parts of Africa. ”

“ By this award the western and part of the northern section of Barotseland as described above were declared to be outside the dominion of the paramount chief and therefore not in the British sphere of influence, while tribal boundaries were complicated by the introduction of a longitudinal and latitudinal frontier. Though this award altered the political boundaries, ethnologically Barotseland remains much as above described. The area of the country under British protection is about 182,000 sq. ”