serpents there.  Mussonzoa dyes cloth black.  Mussio:  the beans of this also dye black.  Kangome, with flowers and fruit like Mocha coffee; the leaves are much like those of the sloe, and the seeds are used as coffee or eaten as beans.  Kanembe- embe:  the pounded leaves used as an extemporaneous glue for mending broken vessels.  Katunguru is used for killing fish.  Mutavea Nyerere:  an active caustic.  Mudiacoro:  also an external caustic, and used internally.  Kapande:  another ordeal plant, but used to produce ‘diaphoresis’.  Karumgasura:  also diaphoretic.  Munyazi yields an oil, and is one of the ingredients for curing the wounds of poisoned arrows.  Uombue:  a large root employed in killing fish.  Kakumate:  used in intermittents.  Musheteko:  applied to ulcers, and the infusion also internally in amenorrhoea.  Inyakanyanya:  this is seen in small, dark-colored, crooked roots of pleasant aromatic smell and slightly bitter taste, and is highly extolled in the treatment of fever; it is found in Manica.  Eskinencia:  used in croup and sore-throat.  Itaca or Itaka:  for diaphoresis in fever; this root is brought as an article of barter by the Arabs to Kilimane; the natives purchase it eagerly.  Mukundukundu:  a decoction used as a febrifuge in the same way as quinine; it grows plentifully at Shupanga, and the wood is used as masts for launches.  I may here add the recipe of Brother Pedro of Zumbo for the cure of poisoned wounds, in order to show the similarity of practice among the natives of the Zambesi, from whom, in all probability, he acquired his knowledge, and the Bushmen of the Kalahari.  It consists of equal parts of the roots of the Calumba, Musheteko, Abutua, Batatinya, Paregekanto, Itaka, or Kapande, put into a bottle and covered with common castor-oil.  As I have before observed, I believe the oily ingredient is the effectual one, and ought to be tried by any one who has the misfortune to get wounded by a Bushman’s or Banyai arrow.

The only other metal, besides gold, we have in abundance in this region, is iron, and that is of excellent quality.  In some places it is obtained from what is called the specular iron ore, and also from black oxide.  The latter has been well roasted in the operations of nature, and contains a large proportion of the metal.  It occurs generally in tears or rounded lumps, and is but slightly magnetic.  When found in the beds of rivers, the natives know of its existence by the quantity of oxide on the surface, and they find no difficulty in digging it with pointed sticks.  They consider English iron as “rotten”; and I have seen, when a javelin of their own iron lighted on the cranium of a hippopotamus, it curled up like the proboscis of a butterfly, and the owner would prepare it for future use by straightening it cold with two stones.  I brought home some of the hoes which Sekeletu gave me to purchase a canoe, also some others obtained in Kilimane, and they have been found of such good quality that a friend of mine in Birmingham has made an Enfield rifle of them.*