Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

414 THINKING BLACK
blacks being now formed round a noble tree— " the tree of
witness " this was called. Here the Chief, nodding affably
to me, stepped out into the centre of the ring and asked
me to join him in the ** signing of the title-deeds." For
all I could guess from this ring it might have been a
prize fight that was planned : can it really be, thought I,
that instead of settling the matter in black and white, it
has to be finished in black and blue ? As matters turned
out, however, our conveyancing ink was Napoleon's kind
—gunpowder. For, cutting out a large square on the tree,
the Chief called on me to fire a bullet into the mark ; then,
with an air of amused paternity, he, with a bang, planted
his copper bullet alongside my lead one. So there it was,
** signed, sealed, and delivered," the living tree carrying in
its bosom the two *' witness-bullets," the human ring
round it a warning to all men that this tree was invio-
late from the woodman's axe. Postal address : Luanza,
Lake Mweru via Chinde. The cliff rising sheer from the
blue Lake, a narrow ledge of flat land for our township,
the Bukongolo Range walling the town high at the back
and sheltering it from the wild west winds, that is
Luanza. The other day, when the present King Albert
of Belgium came along, we sat on the cliff verandah look-
ing across to the far British shore, and I asked him what
he thought of our outlook. " Oh," said he, " here I sit
imagining myself at Folkestone looking over at Calais."
* # *
Here it is, then, on this bluff overhanging Mweru, we
settle down in the dark to hold on to the country—motto :