536 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
wearing skirts of palm-leaves or grass, hovered about 
at respectful distance, and I was told by the chief of 
Nsanda that they had been lately circumcised. Ground- 
nuts are the chief produce here, as well as of all the 
region from Manyanga of the Babwende, because they 
are in demand by the merchants of Embomma. By 
means of the markets held alternately in each district, 
the ground-nuts are being* brought from immense 
distances. But while their cultivation retards explora- 
tion, it proves that the natives are willing to devote 
themselves to any branch, of agriculture that may be 
profitable. In former days the slave and the ivory- 
trade supported a vast portion of this region, but 
perceiving that slaves are not now in demand, and ivory 
not abundant enough to be profitable, the natives have 
resorted to the cultivation of ground-nuts for the supply 
of the Europeans at Embomma, palms for the sake of 
their intoxicating juice, and only a few small patches 
of beans, vetches, sweet potatoes, &c., for home con- 
sumption. 
Close to our camp was a cemetery of a village of 
Mbinda. The grave-mounds were neat, and by their 
appearance I should judge them to be not only the 
repositories of the dead, but also the depositories of all 
the articles that had belonged to the dead. Each grave 
was dressed out with the various mugs, pitchers, wash- 
basins, teapots, kettles, glasses, gin, brandy, and beer 
bottles, besides iron skillets, kettles, tin watering-pots, 
and buckets ; and above the mound thus curiously 
decorated were suspended to the branch of a tree the 
various net haversacks of palm-fibre in which the 
deceased had carried his ground-nuts, cassava bread, 
and eatables. The various articles of property thus 
exhibited, especially the useful articles, had all been 
purposely rendered useless, otherwise I doubt if, with 
all their superstition, thieves could have been restrained 
from appropriating them. 
On the 6th we roused ourselves for a further effort, 
and after filing through several villages separated from 
each other by intervals of waste land, we arrived at 
