Zanzibar; city, island, and coast. Vol. 1 (of 2)Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
History
Zanzibar; city, island, and coast. Vol. 1 (of 2)
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Africa, East -- Description and travel; Ethnology -- Tanzania -- Zanzibar; Zanzibar -- Description and travel
Wheat, barley, and oats here run to straw. Rice is the favourite cereal.
The humid low-lands are cleared of weeds by burning, and the seed is
sown when the first showers fall. To judge from the bazar-price, the
home-grown article is of a superior quality; but nowhere in East Africa
did I find the grain so nutritious as that of the Western Coast. The
hardest working of all African tribes, the Kru-men, live almost entirely
upon red rice and palm-oil. The clove mania has caused the cereal to be
neglected; formerly an export, it is now imported, and in 1860 it cost
the Island £38,000. Jowari (Holcus Sorghum), here called by the Arabs
Ta’am (food), and by the Wasawahili Mtama,—an evident corruption,—is
sown in January and February, and ripens 6 months afterwards. The wheat
of the poorer Arabs, and the oats of horses, it grows 18 feet high, but
the islanders have little leisure, except in the poorest parts, to
cultivate. Banyans, Arabs, and Wasawahili buy it in the Brava country,
the granary of Southern Arabia, on the sea-board from Tanga to Mangao,
and in some districts of the near interior; they retail it in Zanzibar
at large profits. Sesamum (the Hindustani Til or Gingil, the Arabic
Simsim), the commonest of the oleaginous grains, of late demanded by the
French market, where the oil becomes huile d’olives, is also brought
from the Mainland, especially from the northern ports, Lamu and its
neighbours, the Banádir or Haven-land. In 1859 the Island of Zanzibar
exported 8,388,360 lbs, = £20,000. Besides this, the coast ports shipped
several cargos direct: formerly, East Africa used to supply the Red Sea
with this article.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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