Chap. XXI. HIVES AND HONEY. 439 



offered us for a little cloth. Having received a present of food 

 from him, a railway rug was handed to him : he looked at it 

 — had never seen cloth like that before — did not approve 

 of it, and would rather have cotton cloth. " But this will 

 keep you warm at night." — " Oh I do not wish to be kept 

 warm at night." ; — We gave him a bit of cotton cloth, not 

 one-third the value of the rug, but it was more highly 

 prized. His people refused to sell their fowls for oui 

 splendid prints and drab cloths. They had probably been 

 taken in with gaudy-patterned sham prints before. They 

 preferred a very cheap, plain, blue stuff of which they 

 had experience. A great quantity of excellent honey is 

 collected all along the river, by bark hives being placed 

 for the bees on the high trees on both banks. Large pots 

 of it, very good and clear, were offered in exchange for 

 a very little cloth. No wax was brought for sale ; there 

 being no market for this commodity it is probably thrown 

 away as useless. 



At Michi we lose the table-land which, up to this point, 

 bounds the view on both sides of the river, as it were, with 

 ranges of flat-topped hills, 600 or 800 feet high ; and to this 

 plateau a level fertile plain succeeds, on which stand 

 detached granite hills. That portion of the table-land on 

 the right bank seems to bend away to the south, still pre- 

 serving the appearance of a hill range. The height opposite 

 extends a few miles further west, and then branches off in a 

 northerly direction. A few small pieces of coal were picked 

 up on the sandbanks, showing that this useful mineral 

 exists on the Eovuma, or on some of its tributaries: the 

 natives know that it will burn. At the lakelet Chidia, we 

 noticed the same sandstone rock, with fossil wood on it, which 

 we have on the Zambesi, and knew to be a sure evidence 

 of coal beneath. We mentioned this at the time to Captain 



