SECTION IV: KIDNEY: IN AFRICA 311 



Malaya and Polynesia. In the Islands of the Malay and those of 

 Polynesia the opinion prevails that this cotton was introduced by the 

 missionaries or by the negroes. Descourtilz says, for example, of the 

 Antilles that negroes who had lately arrived from Africa possessed a 

 curious superstition. They encircle the joints of their limbs with Supersti- 

 cotton in order to remove rheumatic pains. This was written in g ar aing 

 1827, and may thus be accepted as one of the many evidences of the cotton - 

 influence of the slave traffic on the distribution of cotton, since 

 presumably they carried seeds with them of a plant in which they 

 put so much value. 



Africa. Jean-Baptiste Labat (' Nouv. Eel. de L'Afrique Occid.,' 

 1728, in., 262) describes a tree cotton, which he found being culti- 

 vated in West Africa, in such terms as to leave little doubt of its being 

 the present species. It may be here observed that it appears probable Beputed 

 that writers who speak of G. arboreum as indigenous to Africa may W1 ' 

 have had this plant in mind, a plant which to this day is often 

 popularly spoken of as ' Tree Cotton,' but of course it is a very 

 different species from the G. arboreum of botanists. But of Africa 

 (as already observed) Welwitsch mentions the plant as abundant and 

 wild in depressions and on the drier slopes of Angola, and tells us 

 that there it bears the vernacular name muxinha. Sir J. Kirk 

 (' Livingstone's Expedition,' 1858) found it in the Luabo valley, and 

 speaks of it as ' the cotton grown by the Natives.' Cameron collected 

 it at Tanganika, and Johnson at Nyassa. 



Petherick (' Travels in Central Africa,' 1869, vol. i., 236) refers to 

 a cotton ' which though wild is luxuriant ; the blossoms both pink 

 and yellow.' He adds that the negresses of his party picked and 

 spun the wool, ' thus our wretched torn clothes can now be repaired,' 

 This may or may not have been G. brasiliense, but no doubt was a 

 wild or completely acclimatised species that yielded good useful 

 cotton, and from the flowers changing colour it did not very possibly 

 belong to the so-called Asiatic series of cottons, and therefore stood 

 some chance of being the present plant. (Cf . p. 154.) Lugard (' The 

 Eise of our East African Empire,' 1893, i., 431) says ' a cotton plant 

 grows wild throughout Uganda.' Burton (' First Footsteps in East 

 Africa,' 1894, vol. i., xxvi., also n., p. 175) says that in the Harari 

 language cotton is ttit, he also speaks of the city of Harar as famed 

 for its manufacture of cotton cloth. (Cf. with G. obtusifolittm, var. 

 Africana.) 



Mr. W. W. A. Fitzgerald (' Travels in British East Africa, Zanzi- 

 bar, and Pemba,' 1898, p. 147) says : 'It was in M'Tondoa that I saw 



