a national
decree without the assent of the other, but each has a capital town,
councillors and absolute authority in a province, the two having joint
authority over all other provinces. In their code of laws the Barotse show
an advance on the standard of probably any other African negro state. By
right, an accused chief is tried by his peers, each of whom in rotation
from junior to senior gives his verdict, after which the president reports
the finding of the court to the paramount chief, who passes sentence. As to
their religious beliefs the Barotse imagine the sun to be the embodiment of
a great god whose sole care is for the amelioration of man. Him they
worship, though more pains are taken to appease evil spirits, in whose
existence they also believe, to whom every evil to which man is heir is
attributed. The spirits of ancestors--especially of deceased chiefs--are
also objects of worship. Christianity, of a Protestant evangelical type,
was first introduced into the country in 1884 by Francois Coillard and has
made some progress among the people, among the converts being Letia, eldest
son and heir of Lewanika, the paramount chief.

2. _Barotseland._--This term includes, in the sense of the country in which
the authority of the paramount Barotse chief is acknowledged, not only the
lands of the Barotse proper, but the territory of fifteen contiguous and
subject tribes. This vast territory extends approximately from the Kwito
river in the west to the Kafue river in the east, and from the
Congo-Zambezi watershed in the north to the Linyante or Kwando river and
Zambezi in the south, and may be divided into three groups:--

(a) Central provinces directly administered by the paramount chief from the
capital Lialui (a town on the Zambezi), by the Mokwai from Nalolo, and by
two chiefs of the blood from Sesheke;

(b) Outlying provinces over which, in the absence of a central local system
of government, Barotse chiefs administer districts under the direction of
the paramount chief; and

(c) Tribes over which the local chiefs are permitted to retain their
position subject to the payment of annual tribute and to their doing homage
in person at Lialui when called upon to do so.

With the publication of the king of Italy's award in 1905 in the
Anglo-Portuguese Barotse Boundary dispute (see below), the term Barotseland
may be said to have acquired a second meaning. By this award the western
and part of the northern section of