30S 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
is scraped and made into sponges of a dough-cake 
pattern, and may be seen in almost all Kiganda lava- 
tories. Frequently the indolent prefer to knead a fresh 
sponge-cake and make their ablutions with this to going 
to the river, lake, pond, or well, or troubling themselves 
to fetch a vessel of water. 
The fibres of the stalk are used as cord, and are 
adapted for almost every purpose for which cord is 
useful. The poorest peasants make rough but service- 
able shields also from the stalk, while the fishermen 
of the lake make large sun-hats from it. Many other 
uses might be mentioned, but the above are sufficient to 
prove that, besides its cool agreeable shade, the banana- 
plant will supply a peasant of Uganda with bread, 
potatoes, dessert, wine, beer, medicine, house and fence, 
bed, cloth, cooking-pot, table-cloth, parcel-wrapper, 
thread, cord, rope, sponge, bath, shield, sun-hat, even a 
canoe— in fact, almost everything but meat and iron. 
With the banana-plant, he is happy, fat, and thriving ; 
without it, he is a famished, discontented, woe-begone 
wretch, hourly expecting death. 
