The Wasawahili have many different names for the nut, viz. Kidáka, too green when it falls to the ground for any use but fuel; Dáfú, or Kitále, when the milk is drinkable, the husk is burned, and the shell is made into a ladle (maghraf); the Koróma, when the meat is fit to eat, and Nází,[[54]] the full-grown nut ready for oil-making. This most useful of plants supplies, besides meat, wine and spirits, syrup and vinegar, cords, mats, strainers, tinder, firewood, houses and palings, boats and sails—briefly, all the wants of barbarous life. Every part of it may be pressed into man’s service, from the sheath of the first or lowest leaf, used as a sieve, to the stalk of the young fruit, which, divested of the outer coat, is somewhat like our chestnut. During the hot N. East monsoon the refrigerating, diuretic milk is a favourite with strangers, and much feared by natives. A respectable man is derided if seen eating a bit of ripe cocoa-nut, a food for slaves and savages from the far west, but he greedily consumes the blanc-mange-like pulp of the Dáfu, which is supposed, probably from its appearance, to secrete virility. Rasped, the ripe kernel enters into many dishes; the cream squeezed from it is mixed with boiled rice, and the meat, kneaded with wheat-flour and clarified butter, is made, as at Goa, into scone-like cakes. No palm-wine is so delicious as that of the cocoa-tree, and the vinegar is proportionally good. The Zerambo, or distillation from ‘toddy,’ is adulterated with lime, sugar, and other ingredients, which render it unpalatable as it is pernicious.
Formerly there were many cocoa-nut oil-mills in the town; now (1857) they are transferred to the plantations where Sesamum (Simsim) is also crushed. The ‘Engenho’ is ruder than in the Brazil. A camel, blind-folded to prevent it eating the oil-cake or striking work, paces slowly round the ‘horse-walk,’ moving a heavy beam; this rolls a pestle of 6 inches in diameter in a conical wooden mortar, flat-rimmed above, and 4 feet deep, by 3 wide. Formerly as many as 70,000 lbs. were exported in a single vessel. Now the people save trouble by selling the dried nut, and when oil is wanted for home use they press and bruise it in water, which is then boiled; consequently, though the tree again begins to cover the Island Coast, the oil is three times dearer than at Bombay. It is calculated that 12,000,000 nuts were exported last year (1856) for the soap and candle trades, and a single French house has an establishment capable of curing 50,000 per diem. Demand has prodigiously raised the price of this article. In 1842 the thousand cost from $2 to $2.50; in 1857 it was $12.50. Though the coir of Zanzibar is remarkably fine and was much admired at Calcutta, little use is made of it: some years ago certain Indian Moslems tried to obtain a contract from the local Government, and did not succeed, prepayment being the first thing insisted upon.[[55]]
The constitutional indolence of the people, their dislike to settled and regular work, and their Semitic unwillingness to venture money, have, despite cheap labour and low ground-rents, prevented the Island from taking to its most appropriate industry—sugar-growing. Refiners are agreed that the cane in Zanzibar and Pemba is equal to that in any part of Asia. About three years ago (1857) the late Sayyid established a factory at his estate of Mohayra under a Frenchman, M. Classun, an assistant, and 32 supervisors. Compelled to live in the interior, they sickened, and died off, and thus Mauritius lost another dangerous rival. A superior article was also made by the Persians, but they all caught fever, and either perished or disappeared. The sugar now grown is consumed on the Island, and there is only one steam-mill belonging to the Sayyid.
Cotton is said to thrive upon the Island, but the irregular rains must often damage the crop. At present a small quantity for domestic use is brought from the coast, where there are plots of the shrub growing almost wild. In the drier parts of the Benadir, however, the material for hand-made cloth must be brought from India, mostly from Surat.
The virgin soils of Zanzibar, in fact, labour under only one disadvantage,—the fainéantise of the people, but that one is all in all, hence complaints concerning the expense. In the West India plantations 1 head was allowed per acre of cane, per 2 acres of cotton, and per 3 acres of coffee. Here 4 head would hardly do the work; slave labour is bad, and free labour is worse.
Coffee was once tried in the Island, but the clove soon killed it; now not a parcel is raised for sale. The berry, which was large and flavourless, was not found to keep well. The overrich soil produces an undue luxuriance of leafage, and the shrub lacks its necessary wintering.
In the Brazil the richest lands are given to coffee, the next best to sugar, and the worst to cotton and cereals. The Zanzibar coast from Mombasah to Mozambique produces small quantities of coffee. Here great care is given to it; the berry has a peculiarly dry and bitter flavour, pleasant when familiar, and producing when first taken wakefulness and nervous excitement. At present the Island imports her supplies from Malabar and Yemen. The consumption is not great; the Arabs, who hold it a necessary of life at home, here find it bilious, and end by changing it for betel-nut. The coast growth sells in small lots, at various prices, and may become an article of export. In the African interior the shrub is indigenous between Northern Unyamwezi (S. Lat. 1° 0′) and Southern Abyssinia (N. Lat. 10°); and, as it is found on the Western Coast growing wild about the Rivers Nunez and Pongo (N. Lat. 10° 1′), it probably extends in a broken band across the Continent. There appear to be many varieties of the shrub. In Karagwah the wild bean is little bigger than a pin’s head. Harar exports a peculiarly large species, which sells as Mocha, and the Mozambique coffee does not at all resemble in flavour that of West Africa. Dr Livingstone (Missionary Travels, chap. x.) tells us that coffee brought from Southern Arabia to Angola by the Jesuits was spread probably by agency of birds to 300 leagues from the coast. It has long been ‘monkeys’ food,’ but it is now worked by the ex-slavers.
Indigo here, as well as in most parts of intertropical Africa, grows wild. The great expense of establishments, with the time and trouble, the skill and attention required for the manufacture, will leave it in the hands of Nature for many years to come.
Tobacco might be raised: the plant extends thoughout Eastern and Central Africa, wherever the equinoctial rains fall. Usumbara exports to Zanzibar stiff, thin, round cakes which have been pounded in wooden mortars, and neatly packed in plantain leaves. It is dark and well-flavoured: sailors pronounce it to be very ‘chawable.’ Here it sells at two pice,[[56]] or 3/4d., per cake; at Usumbara it commands about one-fifth of that price, paid in cloth and food.
The oil palm (Elæis Guineensis), whose produce has done so much for the Guinea Coast and the fatal Bight of Biafra, is found, I am told, on the Island of Pemba, and at other places near Zanzibar. About the Lake Tanganyika it grows in abundance; the fruit, however, is a raceme, like the date’s, not a spike, as in the Bonny river. The ‘Mchikichi’ is, therefore, a different and probably an unknown species. Like that of West Africa, it supplies wine as well as oil (The Lake Regions of Central Africa, vol. ii. p. 59). The palm-oil might easily be introduced into Zanzibar, and would doubtless thrive; but the people have enough to do without it.