on towards Nyassa, "You should plant plenty of cotton, and probably the
English will come and buy it." "Truly," replied a far-travelled Babisa
trader to his fellows, "the country is full of cotton, and if these
people come to buy they will enrich us." Our own observation on the
cotton cultivated convinced us that this was no empty flourish, but a
fact. Everywhere we met with it, and scarcely ever entered a village
without finding a number of men cleaning, spinning, and weaving. It is
first carefully separated from the seed by the fingers, or by an iron
roller, on a little block of wood, and rove out into long soft bands
without twist. Then it receives its first twist on the spindle, and
becomes about the thickness of coarse candlewick; after being taken off
and wound into a large ball, it is given the final hard twist, and spun
into a firm cop on the spindle again: all the processes being painfully
slow.

Iron ore is dug out of the hills, and its manufacture is the staple trade
of the southern highlands. Each village has its smelting-house, its
charcoal-burners, and blacksmiths. They make good axes, spears, needles,
arrowheads, bracelets and anklets, which, considering the entire absence
of machinery, are sold at surprisingly low rates; a hoe over two pounds
in weight is exchanged for calico of about the value of fourpence. In
villages near Lake Shirwa and elsewhere, the inhabitants enter pretty
largely into the manufacture of crockery, or pottery, making by hand all
sorts of cooking, water, and grain pots, which they ornament with
plumbago found in the hills. Some find employment in weaving neat
baskets from split bamboos, and others collect the fibre of the buaze,
which grows abundantly on the hills, and make it into fish-nets. These
they either use themselves, or exchange with the fishermen on the river
or lakes for dried fish and salt. A great deal of native trade is
carried on between the villages, by means of barter in tobacco, salt,