The Mti wa Muytu (wild wood), or white mangrove, is found growing not in brackish water, and upon the mud, like the red variety, but chiefly upon the higher sandy levels. The wood is small, it shrinks when dried, it splits easily, and snaps; it is worm-eaten at once, and its porous nature causes it easily to absorb water. In Zanzibar it is used for fuel in lime-burning, and it makes a hot and lasting fire; the people also turn it into caulking mallets, which do not crack or spread out. The usual price (1857) is half a German crown per Korjah.
Vegetables are little prized at Zanzibar: the list is rather of what might be than of what exists. A local difficulty is the half-starved slave who plunders every garden; nothing less than a guard of Baloch would preserve edible property from his necessities and from his truly African wantonness of destruction.
Almost all European vegetables will grow in the Island; they require, however, shade, and they should be planted, as at Bourbon and the Mauritius, between rows of cool bananas. The best soil is the dark vegetable mould near the streams. Here lettuces, beet-root, carrots, potatoes, and yams would flourish—cabbages and cauliflowers have never, I believe, been tried. The ‘Jezár,’ an excellent sweet potato from Comoro and Madagascar, has been neglected almost to extinction. Thirty barrels of many sorted beans were sent from the Cape and grew well: they are good and abundant in the African interior, but the Island has allowed them to die out. The ‘egg-plant’ is remarkably fine, and the wild species thrives everywhere on the sea-board between Somali land and Zanzibar. The Continent sends sundry kinds of pumpkins and gourds. Cucumbers of many varieties grow almost without sowing,—the people declare that they become bitter if touched by the hand whilst being peeled. The Arabs make from the seed an oil of most delicate flavour, far superior for salads than the best Lucchese olive. In London I have vainly asked for ‘cucumber-oil:’ the vegetable is probably too expensive, and the seeds are too small to be thus used at home. About Lagos on the Slave Coast, however, there is a cucumber nearly a foot long, with large pips, which might be sent northwards, and I commend the experiment to the civilized lover of oil. All kinds of ‘Chilis,’ from the small wild ‘bird-pepper’ to the large variety of which the Spaniards are so fond, thrive in Zanzibar, which appears to be their home. There are extensive plantations of betel-pepper on the Eastern coast of the Island.
Wheat, barley, and oats here run to straw. Rice is the favourite cereal. The humid low-lands are cleared of weeds by burning, and the seed is sown when the first showers fall. To judge from the bazar-price, the home-grown article is of a superior quality; but nowhere in East Africa did I find the grain so nutritious as that of the Western Coast. The hardest working of all African tribes, the Kru-men, live almost entirely upon red rice and palm-oil. The clove mania has caused the cereal to be neglected; formerly an export, it is now imported, and in 1860 it cost the Island £38,000. Jowari (Holcus Sorghum), here called by the Arabs Ta’am (food), and by the Wasawahili Mtama,—an evident corruption,—is sown in January and February, and ripens 6 months afterwards. The wheat of the poorer Arabs, and the oats of horses, it grows 18 feet high, but the islanders have little leisure, except in the poorest parts, to cultivate. Banyans, Arabs, and Wasawahili buy it in the Brava country, the granary of Southern Arabia, on the sea-board from Tanga to Mangao, and in some districts of the near interior; they retail it in Zanzibar at large profits. Sesamum (the Hindustani Til or Gingil, the Arabic Simsim), the commonest of the oleaginous grains, of late demanded by the French market, where the oil becomes huile d’olives, is also brought from the Mainland, especially from the northern ports, Lamu and its neighbours, the Banádir or Haven-land. In 1859 the Island of Zanzibar exported 8,388,360 lbs, = £20,000. Besides this, the coast ports shipped several cargos direct: formerly, East Africa used to supply the Red Sea with this article.
Maize (Muhindi) is a favourite article of consumption, and a little is grown on the Island. Bájrí (Máwélé, Panicum spicatum, Roxb.), the small millet, a thin grain, inferior to that of Cutch and Western India, is little cultivated. The gram[[63]] of Hindustan (in Arabic, Hummus; in Persian, Nukhud; and in Kisawahili, Dengu, Cicer Arietinum) is of several varieties, white and red. The Lúbiyá pulse is also of many sizes and colours; the black flourishes everywhere, the red is common, and the white, which the Portuguese of Goa import from the Mozambique regions, is rare. The best and largest comes from Pemba Island; it is also grown on the Continent. The leguminous T’hur (the Arabic Turiyan, and the Kisawahili Barádí, Cajanus Indicus) is almost wild: the Banyans mix it with rice, and make with it the well-known ‘Dáll’ and ‘Kichri.’ The small green pea, known in India as Mung (the Persian Másh, and the Kisawahili Chíroko, or Toka, Phaseolus Mungo, Roxb.), is boiled and eaten with clarified butter (Ghi) like T’hur. The people also use the little black grain resembling poppy-seed, known in India as Urat; in Cutch, Páprí; and here, P’híwí (Phaseolus radiatus). The Muhogo, in the plural ‘Mihogo,’ or White Cassava (Manihot Aypim), resembles in appearance the sweet Manioc of the Brazil (Aypim or Macaxeira). The knotted stem, about six feet long, is crowned with broad digitated leaves; the conical root, however, has a distinct longitudinal fibre the size of small whipcord, which is not found in the ‘black, or poisonous, Manioc’ (Jatropha Manihot, or Manihot utilissima). The people have not attempted to masticate it into a means of intoxication, the Caysúma of the Brazilian Tupy.[[64]] The Muhogo grows everywhere in Zanzibar Island: it is planted in cuttings during the rains, and it ripens six or eight months afterwards. In the Consular reports for 1860 we are told that ‘the Manioc or Cassava, which forms the chief food of the slaves and poorer classes, yields four crops a year.’ This is not probable: the longer all Jatropha is kept in the ground, within certain limits, the larger and better is the root. Manioc is carried as an acceptable present by travellers going into the interior.
At Zanzibar the traveller should train his stomach to this food, and take care not to call it ‘Manioc.’ When raw it resembles a poor chestnut, but in this state none save a servile stomach can eat it without injury. Europeans compare it with parsnips and wet potatoes: the Hindus declare it to be heavy as lead, and so ‘cold’ that it always generates rheumatism. The Wasawahili have some fifty different ways of preparing it. Boiled, and served up with a sauce of ground-nut cream, it is palatable: in every bazar sun-dried lengths, split by the women, and looking like pipe-clay and flour, are to be bought: a paste, kneaded with cold water, is cooked to scones over the fire: others wrap the raw root in a plantain-leaf and bake it, like greeshen, in the hot ashes. The poorer classes pound, boil, stir, and swallow the thick gruel till their stomachs stand out in bold relief. Full of gluten, this food is by no means nutritious; and after a short time it produces that inordinate craving for meat, even the meat of white ants, which has a name in most African languages.
The Bhang (Cannabis Sativa), which grows plentifully, though not wild, in the interior of the Continent, is mostly brought to Zanzibar from India. In Mozambique the Portuguese call it Bange or Canhamo de Portugal (Portugal hemp), and in the Brazil it is also known as Bange, evidently the Hindustani ‘Bhang.’ The negroes smoke it for intoxication, but ignore the other luxurious preparations familiar to Hindustan, Egypt, and Turkey.
Wanga or arrow-root, globular like a variety found in the Concan, is much less nutritious than the long kind. Here the best is brought from Mombasah, and after the rains the southern coast could supply large quantities. The people levigate the root, wash, and sun-dry it: the white powder is then kneaded with Tembú (palm-wine) into small balls, which are boiled in the same liquid. It is ‘cold’ and astringent: the Arabs use it as a remedy for dysentery, and the Hindus declare that it produces nothing but costiveness. Ginger thrives in the similar formation of Pemba, and yet it will not, I am assured, grow at Zanzibar, where it is imported from Western India, the tea being in this climate a good stomachic. The Calumba or Colombo root is largely exported to adulterate beers and bitters. Curious to say, the ground-nut, which extends from Unyamwezi to the Gambia, is rare at Zanzibar.
The corallines of the coast are of course destitute of metals. A story is told of an ingenious Frenchman who, wishing to become Director of Mines in the service of H. H. the Sayyid, melted down a few dollars, and ran a.[a.] vein of silver, most unfortunately, into a mass of madrepore: the curious ‘gangue’ was shown to Lieutenant-Colonel Hamerton, and thus the ’cute experiment failed. The African interior beyond the mountains is rich in copper and iron. I have described the copper of the Taganyika Lake Region: it is said to be collected in small nuggets from torrent-beds, and the bars have evidently been cast in sand. The iron of the Umasai country makes the finest steel.
Gold has undoubtedly been brought from the mountains of Chaga; and the eastern plateau promises to rival in auriferous wealth the Gold Coast. The great fields north of and near the Zambeze, and N. West of Natal, beyond the Transvaal Republic, discovered in 1866-7 by the German explorer, M. Mauch, a country consisting of metamorphic rocks and auriferous quartz, will probably be found extending high up in East Africa throughout the rocks lying inland of the maritime and sub-maritime corallines. It is also likely that the vast coal-beds, explored by the Portuguese, and visited by Dr Livingstone, in the vicinity of Tete on the Zambeze, and afterwards prolonged by him to the Rufuma river, a formation quite unknown to our popular works, will be extended to the Zanzibar coast. The valleys of rivers falling into the Indian Ocean should be carefully examined. The similarity of climate and geographical position which the province of São Paulo, and indeed the maritime regions of the Brazil generally, present with Eastern Africa, first drew my attention to its vast and various carboniferous deposits, and they are found to correspond with those of the Dark Continent. Messrs Rebmann and Pollock visited a spot near the ‘Water of Doruma,’ in the Rabai Range, near Mombasah, where antimony[[65]] is dug. They found no excavations, but the people told them to return after the rains, when the ground would be soft. The holes, they say, were rarely deeper than a foot and a half. Captain Guillain (iii. 277) was told that near the village ‘M’tchiokara’ ‘il existe, presque à fleur de terre, des amas d’une substance métallifère, qui semblerait être un antimoniure d’argent, autant qu’il a été permis d’en juger par les échantillons donnés à nos voyageurs.’