TREES. 



237 



drum anfractuosuni), the Arab Dibaj and the 

 Kisawahili Msufi, common in East as in 

 West Africa, affords a fibre usually considered 

 too short and brittle for weaving, but I have 

 seen Surat cotton very nearly as bad. The con- 

 tents of the pericarp have been used for pillow 

 stuffings : the only result (dicunt) was a remark- 

 able plague of pediculi. The Kewra, or frankin- 

 cense tree of India, abounds. The red beans of 

 the Abrus Precatorius are used by the poor and 

 by the wild people as ornaments ; even the mixed 

 Luso-African race of Annoborn will wear huge 

 strings of this fruit, our original 6 carat.' The soft- 

 wooded Baobab, Mbuyu or calabash tree (Adan- 

 sonia digitata), grows rapidly to a large size upon 

 the Island as upon the Eastern and Western 

 coasts. It is a tree of many uses. The trunk, 

 often girthing 40 feet, forms the water-tank, the 

 trough, the fisherman's Monoxyle ; the fibrous 

 bark is converted into cloth, whose tough net- 

 work is valued by the natives ; the fruit pulp is 

 eaten, and the dried shells serve as Buvu, or 

 gourds. I have repeatedly alluded to this tree in 

 the Lake Regions of Central Africa, and I shall 

 offer other notices of it in the following pages. Of 

 late the Mbuyu or Baobab has brought itself into 

 notice as affording a material more valuable for 



