it soon became nauseous or insipid. Our Zanzibar
Seedees have a very polite custom: when they
see any one of the camp arriving fagged, done up,
and parched with thirst after a long march, one’s
thoughts perhaps running on displays of fruit in shop-
windows, ices, or lapping water in a stream, they run
out, like good fellows, to meet you with a drink. Let
it be hot, bitter, or black as ditch-water, thirst is
allayed; and, on looking to see whence the luxury
came, you observe the men standing in a miry pool,
like dogs on the 12th of August, while the poor birds,
disturbed by the intrusion, wait their turn in the trees
overhead.
There is not a plough in the country; a broad hoe
answers equally well. Men with small axes cut down
the forest; the trees and rubbish are burned; the
long-handled iron hoe, chiefly in the hands of the
women, turns over the light soil; and the seed is
dropped into a hole made by the woman’s toe, and
covered up. Manure is seldom used; six months’
fallow would seem to be its substitute. Fields close
to villages occasionally get manure, or red clay heaps
are spread over the dry, drifting sand-soil of Ugogo.
We had no opportunity of seeing the reaping. Copal
holes are only found between the coast and the African
fihain of hills. The country produces chiefly
sorghum, bajra, sweet potato, and Indian corn, with
tobacco, pumpkins, a small quantity of rice, manioc,
ground-nut, and grains mentioned in Appendix to
Speke’s book. Mushrooms grow wild, and are eaten
considerably. Tomato is not eaten. Tamarind, figs,
honey in hollowed logs placed up trees in the forest,
rich and good. The chief staff of life is stirabout,
CATTLE AND FOOD. 31
made from the sorghum, and from this grain they also
produce a coarse, intoxicating, thick liquor, tasting like
wort. In Ugogo they manufacture small pillars of salt
by evaporation, but it is dirty in colour, with a disagreeable
bitter taste. Fowls, eggs, and goats were
occasionally brought into camp to be bartered for
cloth, tobacco, or beads, as there was not a coin
copper, silver, or gold—that they would take in exchange
for their produce.
We met with no cattle, except those collected for
export at the coast, until we had proceeded twenty
marches into the interior, at which point, and farther
on, we saw a small humped breed, the prevailing
colours being white and red—-the bulls with large
humps and small horns. The goats were of the
ordinary short-haired sort, never used as milkers; and
sheep, though rarely seen, were of the “ doomba ” or
fatty-tailed variety, the size of a year-old Leicester,
costing nine yards cotton stuff. Small bandy-legged
brindled dogs followed the Wagogo.
Food was not abundant. As it was the dry season,
we had to trust to chance and our rifles. One night
our entire dinner consisted of two ears of Indian corn,
eaten with salt; nothing besides, neither bread nor
rice. Bombay very kindly, in the middle of this repast
(which was laid out on our “ service ’’ of reversed
tin lids placed on the tops of wooden boxes as tables),
went and brought a cold grilled chicken, very small,
and awkwardly flattened out. Though our hunger
prompted us to accept the offer, we declined with
many thanks. But, while sitting rather silently over
our empty tin covers, he again appeared, having
foraged five live chickens—thus securing for us not