52 VEGETABLE AND MINERAL PRODUCTIONS. Chap. II. 



up, and they sell the medicine which professes to make good 

 marksmen; others are rain doctors, &c. &c. The various 

 schools deal in little charms, which are hung round the pur- 

 chaser's neck to avert evil : some of them contain the medicine, 

 others increase its power. 



Indigo, about three or four feet high, grows in great luxu- 

 riance in the streets of Tette, and so does the Senna plant. 

 The leaves are undistinguishable from those imported in 

 England. We set the Makololo to collect specimens, but 

 the natives objected to their doing so, though they them- 

 selves never make use of them. A small amount of first-rate 

 cotton is cultivated by the native population for the manu- 

 facture of a coarse cloth. In former times the Portuguese 

 collected it at a cheap rate, and made use of it instead of the 

 calico now imported, to exchange for the Manica gold dust. 

 A neighbouring tribe raises the sugar-cane, and makes a 

 little sugar; but they use most primitive wooden rollers, 

 and having no skill in mixing lime with the extracted juice, 

 the product is of course of very inferior quality. Plenty of mag- 

 netic iron-ore is found near Tette, and coal also to any amount ; 

 a single cliff-seam measuring twenty-five feet in thickness. It 

 was found to burn well in the steamer on the first trial. The 

 ash showed a large quantity of shaly refuse ; but, suspecting 

 that this was from the coal near the surface having been 

 exposed to the weather for ages, we drove a shaft of some 

 thirty feet, and the mineral was found to improve the fur- 

 ther we went in. Gold is washed for in the beds of rivers, 

 within a couple of days of Tette. The natives are fully aware 

 of its value, but seldom search for it, and never dig deeper 

 than four or five feet. They dread lest the falling in of the 

 sand of the river's bed should bury them. In former times, 

 when traders went with hundreds of slaves to the washings, 



