in America.  The trees are cut down with their little axes of soft native iron; trunks and branches are piled up and burnt, and the ashes spread on the soil.  The corn is planted among the standing stumps which are left to rot.  If grass land is to be brought under cultivation, as much tall grass as the labourer can conveniently lay hold of is collected together and tied into a knot.  He then strikes his hoe round the tufts to sever the roots, and leaving all standing, proceeds until the whole ground assumes the appearance of a field covered with little shocks of corn in harvest.  A short time before the rains begin, these grass shocks are collected in small heaps, covered with earth, and burnt, the ashes and burnt soil being used to fertilize the ground.  Large crops of the mapira, or Egyptian dura (Holcus sorghum), are raised, with millet, beans, and ground-nuts; also patches of yams, rice, pumpkins, cucumbers, cassava, sweet potatoes, tobacco, and hemp, or bang (Cannabis setiva).  Maize is grown all the year round.  Cotton is cultivated at almost every village.  Three varieties of cotton have been found in the country, namely, two foreign and one native.  The “tonje manga,” or foreign cotton, the name showing that it has been introduced, is of excellent quality, and considered at Manchester to be nearly equal to the best New Orleans.  It is perennial, but requires replanting once in three years.  A considerable amount of this variety is grown in the Upper and Lower Shire valleys.  Every family of any importance owns a cotton patch which, from the entire absence of weeds, seemed to be carefully cultivated.  Most were small, none seen on this journey exceeding half an acre; but on the former trip some were observed of more than twice that size.

The “tonje cadja,” or indigenous cotton, is of shorter staple, and feels in the hand like wool.  This kind has to be planted every season in the highlands; yet, because it makes stronger cloth, many of the people prefer it to the foreign cotton; the third variety is not found here.  It was remarked to a number of men near the Shire Lakelet, a little further 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.