Several native huts now peep out from the bananas and cocoa-palms on
the right bank; they stand on piles a few feet above the low damp
ground, and their owners enter them by means of ladders. The soil is
wonderfully rich, and the gardens are really excellent. Rice is
cultivated largely; sweet potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes, cabbages,
onions (shalots), peas, a little cotton, and sugar-cane are also
raised. It is said that English potatoes, when planted at Quillimane
on soil resembling this, in the course of two years become in taste
like sweet potatoes (Convolvulus batatas), and are like our potato
frosted. The whole of the fertile region extending from the Kongone
canal to beyond Mazaro, some eighty miles in length, and fifty in
breadth, is admirably adapted for the growth of sugar-cane; and were
it in the hands of our friends at the Cape, would supply all Europe
with sugar. The remarkably few people seen appear to be tolerably
well fed, but there was a dearth of clothing among them; all were
blacks, and nearly all Portuguese "colonos" or serfs. They
manifested no fear of white men, and stood in groups on the bank
gazing in astonishment at the steamers, especially at the "Pearl,"
which accompanied us thus far up the river. One old man who came on
board remarked that never before had he seen any vessel so large as
the "Pearl," it was like a village, "Was it made out of one tree?"
All were eager traders, and soon came off to the ship in light swift
canoes with every kind of fruit and food they possessed; a few
brought honey and beeswax, which are found in quantities in the
mangrove forests.
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