50 MESURIL. 
almost incredible, but it sinks into nothing when compared witli 
the tales told by Pliny of another species of the same fish ; among 
which, that of its stopping a galley, rowed by four hundred 
men, conveying Prince Caius to Antium,'' is not the least re- 
markable, though it was an occurrence that struck all the spec- 
tators, as he confesses, with astonishment — hence its Latin name 
of Remora. (Vide C. Plinii Nat. Hist. L. xxxii. cap. i.) 
On the 11th, we left Mesuril, and returned to Mosambique by 
the way of Cabaceiro. On our road we observed several trees of a 
curious species called Malumpava, (a species of Adansonia,) 
which seems to expend its powers of vegetation in the trunk, and 
might, from its bulk, not unaptly be called the Elephant tree, as 
it sometimes measures full seventy feet in circumference, though 
it bears few leaves or branches in proportion. I measured one of 
the above magnitude, growing in a remote thicket, under which 
I had previously observed with some surprise several human 
skulls and bones, with two or three small drinking vessels, lying 
on a rude kind of coach. The Portuguese could give me no 
explanation of this singular fact, but I conjectured that the place 
was used as a burying-ground by some of the natives; it being 
a custom with the KafFers (vide Mr. Barrow's Travels) and other 
nations in Africa to expose the remains of their dead in this 
manner. The following passage, which I have since met with in 
Purchases Collection, satisfactorily confirms my conjecture. Speak- 
ing of a tribe of natives on this coast, his author says, When 
any of them die, the kindred friends and neighbours assemble 
and bewail him all that day in which he dieth, and the same 
day lay him on a mat or seat (a kind of rude couch) whei^e he 
