The only domestic animals about these villages are dogs, poultry,
and pigeons (fine blue rocks): I never saw in Pongo-land the
goats mentioned by M. du Chaillu. The bush, however, supplies an
abundance of "beef," and, as most South Africans, they have a
word, Isangu (amongst the Mpongwes), or Ingwamba (of the Cape
Lopez people), to express that inordinate longing and yearning
for the stimulus of meat diet, caused by the damp and depressing
equatorial climate, of which Dr. Livingstone so pathetically
complains. The settlements are sometimes provided with little
plots of vegetables; usually, however, the plantations are
distant, to preserve them from the depredations of bipeds and
quadrupeds. They are guarded by bushmen, who live on the spot
and, shortly before the rains all the owners flock to their
farms, where, for a fortnight or so, they and their women do
something like work. New grounds are preferred, because it is
easier to clear them than to remove the tangled after-growth of
ferns and guinea grass; moreover, they yield, of course, better
crops. The plough has not yet reached Pongo-land; the only tools
are the erem (little axe for felling), the matchet (a rude
cutlass for clearing), the hoe, and a succedaneum for the dibble.
After the bush has been burned as manure, and the seed has been
sown, no one will take the trouble of weeding, and half the
surface is wild growth.

Maize (Zea mays) has become common, and the people enjoy "butas,"
or roasted ears. Barbot says that the soil is unfit for corn and
Indian wheat; it is so for the former, certainly not for the
latter. Rice has extended little beyond the model farms on the
north bank of the river; as everywhere upon the West African