MARUTSE-MABUNDA CALABASHES FOR HONEY-MEAD AND CORN.
Three other vegetable products must be added to the list, viz. manza, masoshwani (Arachis hypogæa) and cotton. The manza is all crown property, and is sent to the royal quarters whole; it is there ground and used for a kind of pap without salt. The arachis, which forms part of the tribute, being identical with the ground-nut of the West Coast, is grown nearly everywhere; it is eaten by the natives after it has been roasted in the shell, and not unfrequently utilized by Europeans as a substitute for coffee. The cotton is cultivated for domestic use, and is woven into good strong fabrics; but it is hardly ever seen except in the eastern districts. The growth of all these crops furnishes a proof that rice might be cultivated with advantage.
Round about the huts and amongst the corn and maize may be seen luxuriant masses of sugar-cane (imphi) which is grown not so much for food as for a means of relieving thirst; it is the same sort that is found throughout South Africa, and here ripens between December and February.
The spots chosen for the tobacco plantations are generally hollows, from ten to twenty square yards in area. After being dried and pounded, the tobacco is slightly moistened and made into conical or circular pellets, in the corn-mortars. As a general rule, that which is grown by the Marutse tribes is of closer substance, keeps better, and contains a larger amount of nicotine than that produced amongst the surrounding people.
Considering the climate and the ample means of irrigation, I cannot help being of opinion that all our cereals, especially wheat, would thrive perfectly well in this country, and that not only rice and coffee in the eastern districts, but likewise the vine and many descriptions of European fruits could hardly fail to ripen admirably.
Taking all the various articles of food into account, we find that, after game, ordinary kaffir-corn, kleen-corn, maize, and gourds hold a foremost place; next comes fish; then follow in diminished proportions, sour milk, fresh milk, beef, mutton, goats’ flesh, forty-two species of wild fruits, the two kinds of beans, ground-nuts, fowls, wild birds, manza and honey. Meat is generally boiled in covered earthenware pots, or roasted in the embers, either with or without a spit. In their way of dressing meat, the people are really very clever, and I do not believe that dishes so savoury could be found throughout South Africa as those which are served in the better-class residences of the Marutse, and this is the more surprising when it is remembered that they lead a far more secluded life than any of the Bechuana tribes.
Wild birds are either roasted or boiled, and served up with their head-feathers or crests unremoved, on handsome perforated dishes. Many tribes reject certain kinds of wild game through superstitious motives; some will not touch the pallah; others will not eat the eland; and still more refuse to taste hippopotamus-meat; while, on the other hand, there are some of the Marutse people who enjoy the flesh of certain wild beasts of prey which the great majority of South Africans would hold to be utterly revolting. Both meat and fish are dried and preserved without undergoing any salting process. The various kinds of corn are either boiled or pounded in mortars, and then made into pap with milk or water, maize being boiled or baked, both in its green and dried state. Beans are boiled, and earth-nuts baked; gourds and water-melons are cut up and boiled, the latter being also eaten raw. Manza requires a somewhat careful preparation; when green the roots contain poisonous properties, but after being thoroughly dried and finely pounded they may be safely mixed into a pap something like arrowroot, which forms an excellent sauce for meat of any kind. Wild fruits are baked, both when fresh, and when they have been dried in the sun; sometimes, too, they are stewed in milk, and occasionally they are reduced to pulp; some sorts are ripening at all periods of the year, so that there is an unfailing supply of this means of subsistence.
Salt has to be brought from such long distances, either from the west or south-west, that it is only the wealthier people that can afford to use it at all.
