is an important member of the community, being consulted by Portuguese
and natives alike. Part of his business is that of a detective, it being
his duty to discover thieves. When goods are stolen, he goes and looks
at the place, casts his dice, and waits a few days, and then, for a
consideration, tells who is the thief: he is generally correct, for he
trusts not to his dice alone; he has confidential agents all over the
village, by whose inquiries and information he is enabled to detect the
culprit. Since the introduction of muskets, gun doctors have sprung up,
and they sell the medicine which professes to make good marksmen; others
are rain doctors, etc., etc. The various schools deal in little charms,
which are hung round the purchaser's neck to avert evil: some of them
contain the medicine, others increase its power.

Indigo, about three or four feet high, grows in great luxuriance in the
streets of Tette, and so does the senna plant. The leaves are
undistinguishable from those imported in England. A small amount of
first-rate cotton is cultivated by the native population for the
manufacture of a coarse cloth. A neighbouring tribe raises the sugar-
cane, and makes a little sugar; but they use most primitive wooden
rollers, and having no skill in mixing lime with the extracted juice, the
product is of course of very inferior quality. Plenty of magnetic iron
ore is found near Tette, and coal also to any amount; a single cliff-seam
measuring twenty-five feet in thickness. It was found to burn well in
the steamer on the first trial. Gold is washed for in the beds of
rivers, within a couple of days of Tette. The natives are fully aware of
its value, but seldom search for it, and never dig deeper than four or
five feet. They dread lest the falling in of the sand of the river's bed
should bury them. In former times, when traders went with hundreds of
slaves to the washings, the produce was considerable. It is now
insignificant. The gold-producing lands have always been in the hands of