236 Mr J. Buchanan on the Vegetation 



behind the town is not converted into an arid plain, even 

 in the dry season, so the sanitary state of this entrepot 

 for Eastern Africa is execrable. Though the cocoa-nut 

 palm is predominant amongst the otherwise rank vegeta- 

 tion, other trees, such as the pine apple, orange, citron, 

 guava also grow in the moist sandy soil The fruit of the 

 pine apple, which is not cultivated by the natives, is small, 

 and its flavour poor. The mangoes of Quilimane are goodj 

 but not to be compared with those growing at Mazaro on 

 the Zambesi, said to have been planted by Jesuit mission- 

 aries some centuries ago. The lines of trees* which grace 

 the streets of Quilimane have a grateful effect during the 

 heat of the day ; when in flower, a gorgeous mass of red, 

 interspersed with legumes often a foot to a foot and a half 

 long, gives a specially unique appearance to these East 

 African boulevards. The limit of the sea-breeze appears 

 to mark the habitat of successful growth of the cocoa-nut 

 palm. In the area to which the reach of the tide extends, 

 which is forty miles up the river, a patch of these palms 

 is seen about twelve miles up from the town ; otherwise 

 there are no such arboreal representatives on the river 

 banks, though away from them in the plain calabash trees 

 and those of the Ficus Sycomorus are common. 



The Kiuakiua River. — The banks of this river, on the 

 sides of which Quilimane is built, and which is really one 

 outlet of the Zambesi to the Indian Ocean, are fringed 

 with small trees and bushes. At the head of it, a forest 

 of Borassus palm trees grows, to which the natives resort 

 for the fruit of the tree in times of famine. From the 

 top of this tree, to which the natives ascend by driving 

 spikes in the stem, a wine is got. When fermented it is 

 very intoxicating. It is also used by Quilimane bakers as 

 yeast. Of various species of aquatics which abound in this 

 river, Pistia Stratiotes is the most plentiful. These weeds, 

 when carried down by the current, so accumulate in bends 

 of the river, as often seriously to impede navigation. Thus 

 the River Shir^ has been blocked for six weeks, chiefly by 

 this large water-weed. Canoes had then to be hauled 

 over the top of the dense beds of it ; whilst the African 

 lake steamer ploughed through the masses by first throwing 



* PoincMna regia. 



