io6 Our Outfit for the Interior . 
Pereiras garden produces all that Porta da Lenha 
can grow, with less trouble and of a superior kind. 
Water-melons, tomatoes, onions, and pimento, or 
large pepper (pimentao, siliquastrum, ndungu ya 
yenene), useful to produce “ crocodiles’ tears;” mint, 
and parsley flourish remarkably; turnips are eat¬ 
able after two months ; cabbage and lettuce, beet, 
carrot, and endive after three or four. It is a 
waste of ground to plant peas; two rows, twelve 
feet by four, hardly produce a plateful. Manioc 
ripens between the sixth and ninth month, plan¬ 
tains and bananas once a year, cotton and rice in 
four months, and maize in forty days—with irriga¬ 
tion it is easy to grow three annual crops. The 
time for planting is before the rains, which here last 
six weeks to two months, September and October. 
The staple of commerce is now the nguba, or 
ground-nut (plural, jinguba), which Merolla calls 
incumba, with sometimes a little milho (maize), 
and Calavance beans. Of fruits we And trellised 
grapes, pines, and guavas, which, as at Fernando Po, 
are a weed. The ogrumi , limes, oranges and citrons 
are remarkably fine, and hold, as of old, a high 
place in the simple medicines of the country. A 
cup of lime-leaf tea, drunk warm in the morning, 
is the favourite emetic and cathartic: even in 
Pliny’s day we find “ Malus Assyria, quam alii 
vocantmedicam (Medium?), venenis medetur” (xii. 
7). On the Gold Coast and in the Gaboon region, 
