His People Refused To Sell Their Fowls For Our
Splendid Prints And Drab Cloths.
They had probably been taken in
with gaudy-patterned sham prints before.
They preferred a very
cheap, plain, blue stuff of which they had experience. A great
quantity of excellent honey is collected all along the river, by bark
hives being placed for the bees on the high trees on both banks.
Large pots of it, very good and clear, were offered in exchange for a
very little cloth. No wax was brought for sale; there being no
market for this commodity, it is probably thrown away as useless.
At Michi we lose the tableland which, up to this point, bounds the
view on both sides of the river, as it were, with ranges of flat-
topped hills, 600 or 800 feet high; and to this plateau a level
fertile plain succeeds, on which stand detached granite hills. That
portion of the tableland on the right bank seems to bend away to the
south, still preserving the appearance of a hill range. The height
opposite extends a few miles further west, and then branches off in a
northerly direction. A few small pieces of coal were picked up on
the sandbanks, showing that this useful mineral exists on the Rovuma,
or on some of its tributaries: the natives know that it will burn.
At the lakelet Chidia, we noticed the same sandstone rock, with
fossil wood on it, which we have on the Zambesi, and knew to be a
sure evidence of coal beneath.
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