Page "Nyakyusa people" Paragraph 5

European travelers, being strongly impressed with cleanliness and neatness, seem to have found it north of Lake Nyasa.

Joseph Thomson, in To the Central African Lakes and Back ( 1881 ), comes close to describing the Nyakyusa, " It seemed a perfect Arcadia ....

Imagine a perfectly level plain, from which all weeds, garbage, and things unsightly are carefully cleared away.

Dotted here and there are a number of immense shady sycamores with branches almost as large as a separate tree.

Every few spaces are charmingly neat circucular huts, with conical roofs, and walls hanging out all round with the clay worked prettily into rounded bricks, and daubed symmetrically with spots.

( These have always been considered normal and typical, but due to the German ' hut tax ' the rectangular huts began to dominate ) The grass thatching is also very neat.

The ' tout ensemble ' renders these huts a place in any nobleman's garden.