128 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
After half an hour’s run to the north-west my bearers, 
raising loud shouts of “ Alii ! vai sempre ! ” dashed into 
the market-place where about a hundred souls were 
assembled. The women rose in terror from their baskets 
and piles of vendibles ; some began hastily to pack up, 
others threw themselves into the bush. Order was soon 
restored by the interpreter ; both sexes and all ages 
crowded round me with hootings of wonder, and, when 
they had stared their fill, allowed me to sit down under 
a kind of ficus, not unlike the banyan-tree ( Ficus 
Indica). Tuckey (p. 181) says that this fig is planted 
in all market-places and is considered sacred ; his people 
got into trouble by piling their muskets against one of 
them : I heard of nothing of the kind. The scanty 
supplies — a few fowls, sun-dried fish, kola-nuts, beans, 
and red peppers — were spread upon skins, or stored in 
well-worked baskets, an art carried to perfection in 
Africa ; even the Somali Bedawin weave pots that will 
hold water. The small change was represented by a 
medium which even Montesquieu would not set down as 
a certain mark of civilization. The liorse-shoe of Loggun 
(Denham and Clapperton), the Fa n fleam, the “ small 
piece of iron like an ace of spades on the upper Nile ” 
(Baker), and the iron money of the brachy cephalic 
Nyam-nyams described and drawn by Schweinfurth 
(i. 279), here becomes a triangle or demi-square of bast- 
cloth, about five inches of max. length, fringed, coloured 
like a torchon after a month of kitchen use, and worth 
one-twentieth of the dollar or fathom of cloth. These 
money -mats or coin -clouts are known to old travellers as 
Macuitas and Libonges (in Angolan Libangos). Carli 
and Merolla make them equivalent to brass money ; the 
former were grass-cloth a yard long, and ten = 100 
reis ; in 1694 they were changed at Angola for a small 
copper coin worth 2|c/., and the change caused a dis- 
turbance for which five soldiers were shot. Silver was 
represented by “ Intagas,” thick cottons the size of two 
large kerchiefs ( = Is. 6d.) and “ Folingas,” finer sorts 
used for waist-cloths ( = 3s. 6c/. ) ; and gold by Beirames 
( alii Biramis) : Carli says the latter are coarse Indian 
