30 Journal of Travel and Natural History 



repaid in the vine, which finds in Pungo Andongo a most pro- 

 pitious cUmate. It has been cultivated by some Portuguese 

 colonists for a long time with such success, that annually a quantity 

 of wine is produced, which, to my own mind, is not inferior to the 

 Constantia wines. In more favourable spots the sugar-cane and 

 the palmy Papaya are planted, whilst the Jambos tree, the cherry- 

 yielding Eugenia pedunculata and very fine varieties of the Spondias 

 tree thrive in the more stony soil. 



An equally varied productiveness is to be seen in the tillage 

 grounds. Fields of wheat, ground nuts (Arachis hypogsea), maize, 

 Sesamum indicum (the Gingilie oil-plants), Voandzeia (Voandzeia 

 subterranea), another kind of ground nut, potatoes and mandioca 

 or Cassava adjoin, according as the soil suits them, fields of rice 

 and Sorghum, beans aud sweet potatoes, whilst the Cafoto* and 

 Ginsonge,t two pretty leguminous shrubs, are planted as hedges 

 between them. 



Here and there are plantations of Luco J (Eleusine coracana var.), 

 and Muxiri,§ the former serving, like the barley in Europe, for 

 making beer and also yielding mealy corn, and furnishing groats and 

 flour, the latter supplying sweet roots of which the negroes brew 

 their beer. Water-cresses overgrow the brooks, sometimes lined 

 with clumps of Canna indica, or Avith thick bushes of Mirabilis 

 Jalapa. Both these plants and the Coix lacryma were introduced 

 in olden times by Catholic missionaries, their fruits or seeds 

 furnishing a suitable and cheap material for the manufacture of the 

 indispensable rosary. The soil is everywhere favourable to the 

 growth of tobacco ; the various Cucurbitaceous fruits thrive ex- 

 cellently, and the leaves of a wild Sinapis give a palatable vegetable, 

 whilst its seed embodies all the ingredients for mustard. 



The nutritious Hibiscus esculentus, the oily Ricinus, several 

 species of Capsicum, the cotton plant, growing in equal luxuriance 



* Cafoto is a shrub 4 to 6 feet high, a species of Tephrosia, a very ornamental 

 plant, related to the Tephrosia Vogelii of the Niger flora. Its leaves and tender 

 branches, when fresh gathered, squashed and thro^vn into rivers, stupify the 

 fishes, by which means the latter are caught. 



"I" Ginsonge is the Cajanus indicus, the beans of wliich are very palatable and 

 nutritious, either cooked entire or ground into meal. 



% Luco is a grass of the beautiful genus Eleusine, largely cultivated for its 

 mealy corn by the Caffers, and in Abyssinia, and likewise in tropical India. 



§ Muxiri, a leginninous shrub, with trifoliate leaves and blue flowers, and long 

 cylindrical roots, often as thick as a man's finger, nearly approaching in taste 

 the Spanish liquorice. 



