A Small Amount Of
First-Rate Cotton Is Cultivated By The Native Population For The
Manufacture Of A Coarse Cloth.
A neighbouring tribe raises the
sugar-cane, and makes a little sugar; but they use most primitive
wooden rollers, and having no skill in mixing lime with the extracted
juice, the product is of course of very inferior quality.
Plenty of
magnetic iron ore is found near Tette, and coal also to any amount; a
single cliff-seam measuring twenty-five feet in thickness. It was
found to burn well in the steamer on the first trial. Gold is washed
for in the beds of rivers, within a couple of days of Tette. The
natives are fully aware of its value, but seldom search for it, and
never dig deeper than four or five feet. They dread lest the falling
in of the sand of the river's bed should bury them. In former times,
when traders went with hundreds of slaves to the washings, the
produce was considerable. It is now insignificant. The gold-
producing lands have always been in the hands of independent tribes.
Deep cuttings near the sources of the gold-yielding streams seem
never to have been tried here, as in California and Australia, nor
has any machinery been used save common wooden basins for washing.
CHAPTER II.
Kebrabasa Rapids - Tette - African fever - Exploration of the Shire -
Discovery of Lake Shirwa.
Our curiosity had been so much excited by the reports we had heard of
the Kebrabasa rapids, that we resolved to make a short examination of
them, and seized the opportunity of the Zambesi being unusually low,
to endeavour to ascertain their character while uncovered by the
water.
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