The bread-fruit, and the curious growth (Ravenala) known as the ‘Travellers’ Tree,’ were introduced from the Seychelles Islands: the young plants, however, were soon uprooted and strewed about the fields. Grapes, both white and red, look well, but, as in the Tropical Brazil, the bunches never ripen thoroughly; in fact, the same cluster will contain berries of every age, from the smallest green to the oldest purple. This is a great disadvantage when making wine, and requires to be corrected by syrup. The grape can hardly be expected to thrive where the hot season, as in parts of the New World, is also the rainy season. Like the produce of the Gold Coast, the stones are large and bitter, and the skin is tart, thick, and leathery. Bacchus, though he conquered India and founded Nysa, seems to disdain the equinoctial regions. According to the French another variety should be introduced, and perhaps the ground-grape of the Cape might succeed better. There are many varieties of the vine in the Central Continent, but the people have hardly learned to eat the fruit: at Zanzibar certain Arabs tried it with sugar and rose-water, and suffered in consequence from violent colics. We read in ‘El Bakui’ (A.D. 1403) that some vines bear three crops per annum.
The water-melon, most wholesome of fruits in warm climates, is found in Zanzibar and in the Lake Regions of the interior: the best are said to grow about Lamu and Brava. It is a poor flavourless article, white-yellow (not white and pink) inside, dry, and wanting the refreshing juice; it is fit only for boiling, and its edible seed is the best part. The growth of the papaw is truly tropical; a single year suffices to hang the tree with golden fruit, which is eaten raw and boiled. Hindus, as usual, object to its ‘heat;’ the Arabs make from the pips, which taste like celery, a sherbet, which is said to have peculiar effects.[[59]]
The ‘Khwemwé’ tree bears a nut with a hard reticulated skin: this is roasted like the chestnut, and it affords a small quantity of oil. The Sita-phal (Annona squamosa) and its congener, the Jam-phal, or sour-sop (A. reticulata), grow wild over the Island and the Coast; as in the Brazil, little attention is paid to them; this ‘custard-apple’ is here considered to be a wholesome fruit. The guava is popularly called Zaytun, which means ‘olive,’ a quasi-sacred fruit, possibly on the principle that in England many growths become palms about Easter-time. It runs wild around Mombasah, and spreads over much ground by a peculiar provision of nature:[[60]] the guavas are said not to ripen well; yet on the West coast they are excellent. The Jamli, a well-known Indian tree (Eugenia Jambu), whose somewhat austere, subacid fruit resembles the damson or bullace, is everywhere common. In A.D. 1331 the traveller Ibn Batutah found El Jammún (الجمّون) at Mombasah.
The interior of the Island produces the ‘Fursád,’ a small stunted variety of the Persian red mulberry; the ‘Tút,’ or white species, grows in every jungle from the shore of the Mainland to Fuga, in Usumbara, and suggests the possibility of rearing silk-worms. The pomegranate here, as on the Coast, gives a fruit which is hardly eatable: during the season Omani ships bring a supply of the very best description from the Jebel el Akhzar (the Green Mountain), near Maskat, and apples from the Persian Gulf. The Badam, locally called Bídam (the Persian almond), is here barren; the broad polished leaves are used as platters by the vegetarian Hindus. The Chinese Rambotang or Leechee is neglected, and the fruit is poor. The Ber (jujube) is unusually well-flavoured; according to Moslem custom, the Arab dead are washed with an infusion of the leaves. That South American growth the Mbibo or Cashew (Caju) tree abounds here and on the continental sea-board: the nuts are roasted, the pulp is eaten, though its astringent quince-like flavour is by no means pleasant, and the juice is distilled, as at Goa. After pressure, the yield, exposed two or three days for fermentation, produces the celebrated ‘Cauim’ (Caju-ig) of the Brazilian Tupy-Guarani race, a wine here unknown. The still yields at first a watery spirit, which by cohobation becomes as fiery and dangerous as new rum. The lower orders like it; the effects, they say, last out the week.
The principal wild trees are the following. The fan palm, a native of the Island and the Continent, supplies the chief African industry—mat-making. The ‘Toddy palm’ is found everywhere; the fruit is eaten, but no one cares to draw off the beverage. The Dom, or Theban palm (Hyphene Thebaica), is a rare variety, and the wood is used chiefly for ladder rungs. Gigantic Raphias, called by the Arabs Nakhl el Shaytan, ‘the Devil’s palm,’ throw over the streams fronds 30 and 40 feet long: these, cut, stripped, and bound into rafts, are floated down and exported from the Mainland to the Island; the material is soft and good for hut-making. The graceful Areca palm flourishes everywhere, especially upon the banks of the Pangani river: at the mouth of this stream a saw-mill might be set up for a few dollars, and I have no doubt that it would yield large profits, and extend its business as far as the Red Sea.
The Bombax, or silk-cotton tree (Eriodendrum anfractuosum), the Arab Díbáj and the Kisawahili Msufi, common in East as in West Africa, affords a fibre usually considered too short and brittle for weaving, but I have seen Surat cotton very nearly as bad. The contents of the pericarp have been used for pillow stuffings: the only result (dicunt) was a remarkable plague of pediculi. The Kewra, or frankincense tree of India, abounds. The red beans of the Abrus Precatorius are used by the poor and by the wild people as ornaments; even the mixed Luso-African race of Annobom will wear huge strings of this fruit, our original ‘carat.’ The soft-wooded Baobab, Mbuyu or calabash tree (Adansonia digitata), grows rapidly to a large size upon the Island as upon the Eastern and Western coasts. It is a tree of many uses. The trunk, often girthing 40 feet, forms the water-tank, the trough, the fisherman’s Monoxyle; the fibrous bark is converted into cloth, whose tough network is valued by the natives; the fruit pulp is eaten, and the dried shells serve as Buyu, or gourds. I have repeatedly alluded to this tree in the Lake Regions of Central Africa, and I shall offer other notices of it in the following pages. Of late the Mbuyu or Baobab has brought itself into notice as affording a material more valuable for paper than straw, esparto or wood pulp, and its superiority to other African basts, has been acknowledged in England.[[61]] The Mpingo (Dalbergia Melanoxylum) gives a purple timber, not a little like rosewood. The ‘African oak,’ a species of teak, is reported to exist; but this tree does not extend far north of Mozambique. The ‘P’hun’ is a stately growth, whose noble shaft, often 80 feet high, springs without knot or branch, till its head expands into a mighty parachute. It is more ornamental than useful,—the wood is soft, full of sap, like our summer timber, and subject to white ants. In these hot, wet, and windy tropical regions some trees, especially those without gum or resinous sap, grow too fast, and are liable to rot, whilst others take many years to mature, and are almost unmanageably hard and heavy. Hence we have had timber-cutting establishments set up by our Government at a large expense in the Brazil and in West Africa, but the produce never paid the voyage to England.
The woods known to commerce are the ‘Líwá,’ a white-veined, faintly-perfumed, bastard sandal from Madagascar: it is used for the sacred fire by the poorer Parsees. Granadille wood is exported from the Mainland to Europe, where it is worked for the bearings of mills and for the mouth-pieces and flanges of instruments. The Arabs call it ‘Abnús,’ and the Sawahili ‘Mpingo,’ both signifying ebony, which it resembles in appearance, though not in qualities. Less brittle than ebony, and harder than lignum vitæ, it spoils the saw; and being very heavy, it refuses to absorb grease or water. It makes good ram-rods, and the Usumbara people have cut it into pipe-bowls long before our briar-root was dreamed of.
The sweet-smelling ‘Kalambak’ (Vulg. Columbo), once common upon the Island, is now brought from Madagascar. There are two kinds,—one poor and yellow, like our box, the other hard, heavy, and dark red. Its fine grain takes the high polish of mahogany, and it would make good desks and work-boxes. Comoro men and Indian carpenters turn out rude furniture of this wood, which is wilfully wasted: in felling and shaping it the plantation-slaves, who ignore the saw, chip away at least half. The smoke is said, to keep off mosquitos. The mango, the jack, the copal tree, and many others, give fine hard woods for cabinet work.
Planks and scantling, cross-beams and door-panels, are made of two fine trees, the ‘Mtimbati’ and the ‘Mvúle.’[[62]] The negro carpenters always sacrifice, I have said, a tree to make a plank, and the latter is so heavy that for all light erections, such as upper rooms, boards must be imported from Europe. The Mtimbati is the more venous; rungs of ladders, well kept and painted, will last 15 years. The enduring Mvúle, a close-grained yellow wood, is rare upon the Island, but common in the Coast jungles. As is the case with the Kalambak, there is no tariff for these trees: what to-day is sold at a bazar auction for $1 may in a week fetch $8. A good practical account of the medicinal plants and timbers of Madagascar and Mozambique, Zanzibar and the Seychelles, will be found in appendices A. B. vol. ii. of Mr Lyons McLeod’s ‘Travels in Eastern Africa, with a Narrative of a Residence in Mozambique.’ Captain Guillain may also be consulted, vol. i. p. 23-25.
The Bordi or Zanzibar rafters are felled by slaves on the Mainland, and are brought over by Arabs and other vessels. The material is the useful mangrove, of which we here find the normal two species; the Arabs call both ‘Gurum,’ and prefer the Makanda, or red kind. At Zanzibar the posts which become worm-eaten, and are reduced to powder by white ants, must be changed every five years. In arid Maskat they will last out the century, and they find their way to Aden, to Jeddah, and even to Meccah. The usual price in the Island is $2 to $3 per ‘Korjah,’ or score.