The garments that were usually worn were simply aprons of antelope-skins descending to the knees, but occasionally a short petticoat might be seen made of woven grass and dyed with bright colours. The ladies not unfrequently wore girdles of beads attached to green skirts embroidered with silk and ornamented with bits of glass or cowries, or sometimes the skirts were made of the grass cloth called lambda, which, in blue, yellow, or black, is so much valued by the people of Zanzibar.
Garments of these pretensions, however, always indicated that the wearers belonged to the upper classes; the lower orders, such as the smaller dealers, as well as the slaves, had hardly any clothes at all.
The women commonly acted as porters, and arrived at the market with huge baskets on their backs, which they secured by means of straps passed across the forehead. Having deposited their loads upon the chitoka, they turned out their goods, and then seated themselves inside the empty baskets.
As the result of the extreme fertility of the country all the articles offered for sale were of a first-rate quality. There were large stores of rice, which had been grown at a profit a hundred times as great as the cost, and maize which, producing three crops in eight months, yielded a profit as large again as the rice. There were also sesame, Urua pepper stronger than Cayenne, manioc, nutmegs, salt, and palm-oil. In the market, too, were hundreds of goats, pigs and sheep, evidently of a Tartar breed, with hair instead of wool; and there was a good supply of fish and poultry. Besides all these there was an attractive display of bright-coloured pottery, the designs of which were very symmetrical.
In shrill, squeaky voices, children were crying several varieties of native drinks; banana-wine, pombé, which, whatever it was, seemed to be in great demand; malofoo, a kind of beer compounded of bananas, and mead, a mixture of honey and water, fermented with malt.
But the most prominent feature in the whole market was the traffic in stuffs and ivory. The pieces could be counted by thousands of the unbleached mcrikani from Salem in Massachusetts, of the blue cotton, kaniki, thirty-four inches wide, and of the checked sohari, blue and black with its scarlet border. More expensive than these were lots of silk diulis, with red, green, or yellow grounds, which are sold in lengths of three yards, at prices varying from seven dollars to eighty, when they are interwoven with gold.
The ivory had come from well-nigh every part of Central Africa, and was destined for Khartoom, Zanzibar, and Natal, many of the merchants dealing in this commodity exclusively.
How vast a number of elephants must be slaughtered to supply this ivory may be imagined when it is remembered that over 200 tons, that is, 1,125,000 lbs., are exported annually to Europe. Of this, much the larger share goes to England, where the Sheffield cutlery consumes about 382,500 lbs. From the West Coast of Africa alone the produce is nearly 140 tons.
The average weight of a pair of tusks is 28 lbs., and the ordinary value of these in 1874 would be about 60l.; but here in Kazonndé were some weighing no less than 165 lbs., of that soft, translucent quality which retains its whiteness far better than the ivory from other sources.
As already mentioned, slaves are not unfrequently used as current money amongst the African traders, but the natives themselves usually pay for their goods with Venetian glass beads, of which the chalk-white are called catchokolos, the black bubulus, and the red sikunderetches. Strung in ten rows, or khetés, these beads are twisted twice round the neck, forming what is called a foondo, which is always reckoned of considerable value.