POPULAR INDUSTRIES. 469 



On the 8th of October they got to the first village, and here 

 the wives were paid for carrying his things ; the chief offering 

 beer and toku, and the latter was accepted by the doctor. They 

 sang and clapped their hands until one o'clock in the morning. 

 October 9th found them four thousand feet above the sea. This 

 is the hottest month, but the air is clear and pleasant. The 

 country is very fine, lying in long slopes, with mountains rising 

 all around, from two to three thousand feet above this upland. 

 They are mostly jagged and rough (not rounded like those near 

 to Mataka's) : the long slopes are nearly denuded of trees, and the 

 patches of cultivation are so large and often squarish in form 

 that but little imagination is requisite to transform the whole 

 into the cultivated fields of England ; but no hedgerows exist. 

 The trees are in clumps on the tops of the ridges, or at the 

 villages, or at the places of sepulture. Just now the young leaves 

 are out, but are not yet green. In some lights they look brown, 

 but with transmitted light, or when one is near them, crimson 

 prevails. A yellowish-green is met sometimes in the young 

 leaves, and brown, pink, and orange-red. The soil is rich, but 

 the grass is only excessively rank in spots ; in general it is short. 

 A kind of trenching of the ground is resorted to ; they hoe deep, 

 and draw it well to themselves : this exposes the other earth to 

 the hoe. The soil is burned too : the grass and weeds are placed 

 in flat heaps, and soil placed over them : the burning is slow, 

 and most of the products of combustion are retained to fatten 

 the field ; in this way the people raise large crops. Men and 

 women and children engage in field labor, but at present many 

 of the men are engaged in spinning buaze and cotton. The 

 former is made into a coarse sacking-looking stuff, immensely 

 strong, which seems to be worn by the women alone ; the men 

 are clad in uncomfortable goatskins. No wild animals seem to 

 be in the country, and indeed the population is so large they 

 would have very unsettled times of it. At every turning they 

 meet people, or see their villages; all armed with bows and 

 arrows. The bows are unusually long : Livingstone measured 

 one made of bamboo and found that along- the bowstring; it 

 measured six feet four inches. Many carry large knives of fine 

 iron ; and indeed the metal is abundant. Young men and women 

 wear the hair long ; a mass of small ringlets comes down and 



