588 
TOBACCO-PLANT. — POTATO. — WILD FRUITS. 
This is the extent of their horticulture : and, that it does not 
include the tobacco plants is a circumstance greatly to be wondered at, 
when it is considered how excessively fond they are of smoking, and 
that the nations beyond them, as well as the Hottentots at Klaar- 
water, cultivate it with success ; and where they have therefore seen, 
and become well acquainted with, the plant. But this is again a 
proof of the force of custom, and of the slowness with which un- 
civilized men admit improvement, when it combats ancient habits or 
prejudices ; for, on being asked why they did not themselves grow 
tobacco instead of begging it from every stranger, who visited them, 
they replied, that they did not know the reason, but believed it was 
because it had never been their practice to plant it. Yet the culti- 
vation of this, and of various useful vegetables which I mentioned 
to them, was confessed to be a desirable object ; and it appeared from 
this acknowledgment that they were not absolutely averse to making 
the attempt. They were, on the contrary, exceedingly pleased and 
thankful, when I put it in their power to cultivate the potato and 
the peachy by giving them, as before related, a quantity of each. 
The pursuit of agriculture, though deemed by them of high 
importance, is not, however, carried so far as to put the nation in 
a state of plenty ; and it will have appeared in the course of the 
foregoing pages that 'want of food is sometimes the lot of many, and 
that abundance is the good fortune of comparatively only a few. To 
fill up this deficiency, and escape starvation, or at least to mitigate 
their daily hunger, they are reduced to the necessity of searching 
the plains for those 'wild roots which nature offers ; the produce of 
the chase, though sometimes plentiful, being too precarious for their 
constant dependence ; and spontaneous fruits of no kind, excepting 
the small berries of the Gudrri * and the Moreekwo f , being any 
* Different species of Euclea are, as before mentioned, called Gimiri by the Hot- 
tentots (See Vol. I. p. 387.) ; but that species which I met with most abundantly in the 
country of the Bachapins, is the 
Eiiclea myrtina, B. Cat. Geogr. 2573. Frutex 4? — 5-pedalis, foliosus, ramosus, 
dioicus. Folia nuda plana lanceolata obtusa. Baccae glabrae globosse pisi magnitudine, 
nigrae, dulces et sub-astringentes. 
f Moreekixo is the Sichuana name for the Grenoia Jlava. See Vol. I. p. 364;. 
