IRON. 



311 



from the crimson matter that stains the cane and the 

 leaves of red holcus. All cloths have the tambua or 

 fringe indispensable in East Africa. Both weaving and 

 dyeing are men's not women's work in these lands. 



The cloth is a poor article : like the people of Ashanti, 

 who from time immemorial have woven their own 

 cottons, the East African ever prefers foreign fabrics. 

 The loose texture of his own produce admits wind and 

 rain ; when dry it is rough and unpleasant, when wet 

 heavy, comfortless as leather, and it cannot look clean, 

 as it is never bleached. According to the Arabs, the 

 yarn is often dipped into a starch made from grain, 

 for the purpose of thickening the appearance of the 

 texture : this disappears after the first washing, and the 

 cloth must be pegged down to prevent its shrinking to 

 half-size. The relative proportion of warp and weft is 

 unknown, and the woolly fuzzy quality of the half-wild 

 cotton now in use impoverishes the fabric. Despite the 

 labour expended upon these cloths, the largest size may 

 be purchased for six feet of American domestics, or for 

 a pair of iron hoes : there is therefore little inducement 

 to extend the manufacture. 



Iron is picked up in the state called Utundwe, or 

 gangue, from the sides of low sandstone hills : in places 

 the people dig pits from two to four feet deep, and, ac- 

 cording to the Arabs, they find tears, nodules, and 

 rounded lumps. The pisolithic iron, common in the 

 maritime regions, is not worked. The mhesi or black- 

 smith's art is still in its infancy. The iron-stone is car- 

 ried to the smithy, an open shed, where the work is 

 done: the smelting-furnace is a hole in the ground, 

 filled with lighted charcoal, upon which the utundwe is 

 placed, and, covered with another layer of fire, it is 



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