Every Family Of Any Importance Owns A
Cotton Patch Which, From The Entire Absence Of Weeds, Seemed To Be
Carefully Cultivated.
Most were small, none seen on this journey
exceeding half an acre; but on the former trip some were observed of
more than twice that size.
The "tonje cadja," or indigenous cotton, is of shorter staple, and
feels in the hand like wool. This kind has to be planted every
season in the highlands; yet, because it makes stronger cloth, many
of the people prefer it to the foreign cotton; the third variety is
not found here. It was remarked to a number of men near the Shire
Lakelet, a little further on towards Nyassa, "You should plant plenty
of cotton, and probably the English will come and buy it." "Truly,"
replied a far-travelled Babisa trader to his fellows, "the country is
full of cotton, and if these people come to buy they will enrich us."
Our own observation on the cotton cultivated convinced us that this
was no empty flourish, but a fact. Everywhere we met with it, and
scarcely ever entered a village without finding a number of men
cleaning, spinning, and weaving. It is first carefully separated
from the seed by the fingers, or by an iron roller, on a little block
of wood, and rove out into long soft bands without twist. Then it
receives its first twist on the spindle, and becomes about the
thickness of coarse candlewick; after being taken off and wound into
a large ball, it is given the final hard twist, and spun into a firm
cop on the spindle again: all the processes being painfully slow.
Iron ore is dug out of the hills, and its manufacture is the staple
trade of the southern highlands. Each village has its smelting-
house, its charcoal-burners, and blacksmiths. They make good axes,
spears, needles, arrowheads, bracelets and anklets, which,
considering the entire absence of machinery, are sold at surprisingly
low rates; a hoe over two pounds in weight is exchanged for calico of
about the value of fourpence. In villages near Lake Shirwa and
elsewhere, the inhabitants enter pretty largely into the manufacture
of crockery, or pottery, making by hand all sorts of cooking, water,
and grain pots, which they ornament with plumbago found in the hills.
Some find employment in weaving neat baskets from split bamboos, and
others collect the fibre of the buaze, which grows abundantly on the
hills, and make it into fish-nets. These they either use themselves,
or exchange with the fishermen on the river or lakes for dried fish
and salt. A great deal of native trade is carried on between the
villages, by means of barter in tobacco, salt, dried fish, skins, and
iron. Many of the men are intelligent-looking, with well-shaped
heads, agreeable faces, and high foreheads. We soon learned to
forget colour, and we frequently saw countenances resembling those of
white people we had known in England, which brought back the looks of
forgotten ones vividly before the mind.
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