294 The Yellala of the Congo . 
they had stared their fill, allowed me to sit down 
under a kind of ficus, not unlike the banyan- 
tree (Ficus Indicct). Tuckey (p. 181) says that 
this fig is planted in all market-places and is con¬ 
sidered 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 re¬ 
presented by a medium which even Montesquieu 
would not set down as a certain mark of civiliza¬ 
tion. The horse-shoe of Loggun (Denham and 
Clapperton), the Fa/z fleam, the “ small piece of 
iron like an ace of spades on the upper Nile” 
(Baker), and the iron money of the brachycephalic 
Nyam-nyams described and drawn by Schweim 
furth (i. 279), here becomes a triangle or demi- 
square of bast-cloth, about 5 inches of max. 
length, fringed, coloured like a to 7 'chon 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 zz 100 reis ; in 1694 they were changed 
