THE BUSH TRACK 249 



of the most ancient of all plants — a Cycad, that botani- 

 cal paradox, combining some of the characteristics of 

 the palm and of the pine with the appearance of a tree- 

 fern, while being of distinctive order, which flourished 

 during the age when the Iguanodon and the Polacanthus 

 and other monstrous and ungainly reptiles roamed the 

 land. 



Let us rest awhile reviewing the earlier operations 

 by which its nuts were rendered innocuous, and while 

 the ghosts of the past make and bake their bread. 



The fresh nuts of the plant {Cycas media) known as 

 Kim-alo, were roasted, and while hot bruised between 

 two stones, the upper (Oo-kara) a sphere flattened at 

 the poles into which the use of ages wore thumb and 

 finger indentations, the nether (Diban) flat with a 

 saucer-like depression. Fragments of the husks were 

 carefully eliminated. The coarse meal was put into 

 a dilly-bag and placed in running water below a slight 

 fall, from the lip of which fluming, improvised from 

 the leaf of native ginger, conducted a gentle stream. 

 Two days were sufficient to leach the poisonous principle ; 

 but if the initial process of roasting the nuts was omitted 

 — as in some districts — the meal was submitted to the 

 purification of water for as long as two months, when 

 it would be tasteless. It was then ground on the nether 

 stone by the Moo-ki (almost a perfect sphere), used 

 with a rotary action, until reduced to flour-like fineness, 

 when it was made into flat or sausage-shaped cakes, 

 wrapped in green leaves and baked. The intracta- 

 bihty of the Cycad is such that if cattle eat the leaves 

 they die or become permanently afflicted with a disease 

 of the nature of rickets. To the human palate the 

 fresh nuts are inflammatory, and are said to cause 

 intense pain ending with death. That the blacks dis- 

 covered the means of converting such a substance into 



