30 
CULTIVATION OF THE GROUND. 
it soon became nauseous or insipid. Our Zan- 
zibar Seedees have a very polite custom : when they 
see any one of the camp arriving fagged, done up, 
and parched with thirst after a long march, one's 
thoughts perhaps running on displays of fruit in shop- 
windows, ices, or lapping water in a stream, they run 
out, like good fellows, to meet you with a drink. Let 
it be hot, bitter, or black as ditch-water, thirst is 
allayed; and, on looking to see whence the luxury 
came, you observe the men standing in a miry pool, 
like dogs on the 12th of August, while the poor birds, 
disturbed by the intrusion, wait their turn in the trees 
overhead. 
There is not a plough in the country; a broad hoe 
answers equally well. Men with small axes cut down 
the forest ; the trees and rubbish are burned ; the 
long-handled iron hoe, chiefly in the hands of the 
women, turns over the light soil ; and the seed is 
dropped into a hole made by the woman's toe, and 
covered up. Manure is seldom used; six months' 
fallow would seem to be its substitute. Fields close 
to villages occasionally get manure, or red clay heaps 
are spread over the dry, drifting sand-soil of Ugogo. 
We had no opportunity of seeing the reaping. Copal 
holes are only found between the coast and the Afri- 
can chain of hills. The country produces chiefly 
sorghum, bajra, sweet potato, and Indian corn, with 
tobacco, pumpkins, a small quantity of rice, manioc, 
ground-nut, and grains mentioned in Appendix to 
Speke's book. Mushrooms grow wild, and are eaten 
considerably. Tomato is not eaten. Tamarind, figs, 
honey in hollowed logs placed up trees in the forest, 
rich and good. The chief staff of life is stirabout, 
