rich, and the gardens are really excellent. Rice is cultivated largely;
sweet potatoes, pumpkins, tomatoes, cabbages, onions (shalots), peas, a
little cotton, and sugar-cane are also raised. It is said that English
potatoes, when planted at Quillimane on soil resembling this, in the
course of two years become in taste like sweet potatoes (_Convolvulus
batatas_), and are like our potato frosted. The whole of the fertile
region extending from the Kongone canal to beyond Mazaro, some eighty
miles in length, and fifty in breadth, is admirably adapted for the
growth of sugar-cane; and were it in the hands of our friends at the
Cape, would supply all Europe with sugar. The remarkably few people seen
appear to be tolerably well fed, but there was a dearth of clothing among
them; all were blacks, and nearly all Portuguese "colonos" or serfs. They
manifested no fear of white men, and stood in groups on the bank gazing
in astonishment at the steamers, especially at the "Pearl," which
accompanied us thus far up the river. One old man who came on board
remarked that never before had he seen any vessel so large as the
"Pearl," it was like a village, "Was it made out of one tree?" All were
eager traders, and soon came off to the ship in light swift canoes with
every kind of fruit and food they possessed; a few brought honey and
beeswax, which are found in quantities in the mangrove forests. As the
ships steamed off, many anxious sellers ran along the bank, holding up
fowls, baskets of rice and meal, and shouting "Malonda, Malonda," "things
for sale," while others followed in canoes, which they sent through the
water with great velocity by means of short broad-bladed paddles.

Finding the "Pearl's" draught too great for that part of the river near
the island of Simbo, where the branch called the Doto is given off to the
Kongone on the right bank, and another named Chinde departs to the secret
canal already mentioned on the left, the goods belonging to the
expedition were taken out of her, and placed on one of the grassy islands