APPENDIX I; 



417 



hnnd, who seldom visits the northern kingdoms, does not find 

 compensation for porterage and rations. The second and prin- 

 cipal use of cowries is for exportation to the West African coast, 

 where they are used in currency — 50 strings, each of 40 shells, 

 or a total of 2000, representing the dollar. This, in former 

 days a most lucrative trade, is now nearly ruined. Cowries 

 were purchased at 75 cents per jizlah, which represents from 

 3 to 3-J sacks, of which much, however, was worthless. The 

 sacks in which they were shipped cost in Zanzibar 1 dollar 

 44 cents, and fetched in West Africa 8 or 9 dollars. The 

 shells sold at the rate of 80/. (60/. was the average English 

 price) per ton ; thus the profits were estimated at 500 percent., 

 and a Hamburg house rose, it is said, by this traffic, from 1 to 

 18 ships, of which 7 were annually engaged in shipping cowries. 

 From 75 cents the price rose to 4 dollars, it even attained a 

 maximum of 10 dollars, the medium being 6 and 7 dollars per 

 jizlah, and the profits necessarily declined. 



Cotton is indigenous to the more fertile regions of Eastern as 

 well as of Western Africa. The specimens hitherto imported 

 from Port Natal and from Angola have given satisfaction, as 

 they promise, with careful cultivation, to rival in fineness, firm- 

 ness, and weight the medium-staple cotton of the New World. 

 On the line between Zanzibar and the Tanganyika Lake the 

 shrub grows almost wild, with the sole exception of Ugogo and 

 its two flanks of wilderness, where the ground is too hard and 

 the dry season too prolonged to support it The partial existence 

 of the same causes renders it scarce and dear in Unyamwezi. A 

 superior quality was introduced by the travelling Arabs, but it 

 soon degenerated. Cotton flourishes luxuriantly in the black 

 earths fat with decayed vegetation, and on the rich red clays of 

 the coast regions, of Usumbara, Usagara, and Ujiji, where water 

 underlies the surface. These almost virgin soils are peculiarly 

 fitted by atmospheric and geologic conditions for the development 

 of the shrub, and the time may come when vast tracts, nearly 

 half the superficies of the lands, here grass-grown, there cum- 

 bered by the primaeval forest, may be taught to bear crops equal- 

 ling the celebrated growths of Egypt and Algeria, Harar and 

 Abyssinia. At present the cultivation is nowhere encouraged, 

 and it is limited by the impossibility of exportation to the scanty 

 domestic requirements of the people. It is grown from seed 

 sown immediately after the rains, and the only care given to it 

 is the hedging requisite to preserve the dwarf patches from the 

 depredations of cattle. In some parts the shrub is said to wither 

 after the third year, in others to be perennial. 



VOL. II. E E 



