The Wasawahili have many different names for the nut, viz. Kidáka, too green when it falls to the ground for any use but fuel; Dáfú, or Kitále, when the milk is drinkable, the husk is burned, and the shell is made into a ladle (maghraf); the Koróma, when the meat is fit to eat, and Nází,[54] the full-grown nut ready for oil-making. This most useful of plants supplies, besides meat, wine and spirits, syrup and vinegar, cords, mats, strainers, tinder, firewood, houses and palings, boats and sails—briefly, all the wants of barbarous life. Every part of it may be pressed into man’s service, from the sheath of the first or lowest leaf, used as a sieve, to the stalk of the young fruit, which, divested of the outer coat, is somewhat like our chestnut. During the hot N. East monsoon the refrigerating, diuretic milk is a favourite with strangers, and much feared by natives. A respectable man is derided if seen eating a bit of ripe cocoa-nut, a food for slaves and savages from the far west, but he greedily consumes the blanc-mange-like pulp of the Dáfu, which is supposed, probably from its appearance, to secrete virility. Rasped, the ripe kernel enters into many dishes; the cream squeezed from it is mixed with boiled rice, and the meat, kneaded with wheat-flour and clarified butter, is made, as at Goa, into scone-like cakes. No palm- wine is so delicious as that of the cocoa-tree, and the vinegar is proportionally good. The Zerambo, or distillation from ‘toddy,’ is adulterated with lime, sugar, and other ingredients, which render it unpalatable as it is pernicious. Formerly there were many cocoa-nut oil-mills in the town; now (1857) they are transferred to the plantations where Sesamum (Simsim) is also crushed. The ‘Engenho’ is ruder than in the Brazil. A camel, blind- folded to prevent it eating the oil-cake or striking work, paces slowly round the ‘horse-walk,’ moving a heavy beam; this rolls a pestle of 6 inches in diameter in a conical wooden mortar, flat-rimmed above, and 4 feet deep, by 3 wide. Formerly as many as 70,000 lbs. were exported in a single vessel. Now the people save trouble by selling the dried nut, and when oil is wanted for home use they press and bruise it in water, which is then boiled; consequently, though the tree again begins to cover the Island Coast, the oil is three times dearer than at Bombay. It is calculated that 12,000,000 nuts were exported last year (1856) for the soap and candle trades, and a single French house has an establishment capable of curing 50,000 per diem. Demand has prodigiously raised the price of this article. In 1842 the thousand cost from $2 to $2.50; in 1857 it was $12.50. Though the coir of Zanzibar is remarkably fine and was much admired at Calcutta, little use is made of it: some years ago certain Indian Moslems tried to obtain a contract from the local Government, and did not succeed, prepayment being the first thing insisted upon.[55]