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I went with the Makondé to see a specimen of the gum-copal tree in the vicinity of this village. The leaves are in pairs, glossy green, with the veins a little raised on both face and back; the smaller branches diverge from the same point: the fruit, of which we saw the shells, seems to be a nut; some animal had in eating them cut them through.
The gum-copal tree, when perforated by a grub, exudes from branches no thicker than one's arm, masses of soft, gluey-looking gum, brownish yellow, and light grey, as much as would fill a soup-plate. It seems to yield this gum only in the rainy season, and now all the trees are full of sap and gum. 21st February, 1867.
Very little is done in the way of trade; some sorghum, sem-sem seed, gum-copal, and orchilla weed, constitute the commerce of the port: I saw two Banian traders settled here. 7th April, 1866. Went about south from Kindany with a Somalie guide, named Ben Ali or Bon Ali, a good-looking obliging man, who was to get twenty dollars to take us up to Ngomano.
We now crossed a brook, Chirongo, one yard wide and one deep; but our march was all through well-grown forest, chiefly gum-copal trees and bark-cloth trees. The gum-copal oozes out in abundance after or during the rains, from holes a quarter of an inch in diameter, made by an insect: it falls, and in time sinks into the soil, a supply for future generations.
The adjacent country has large game at different water pools, and as the whole country is somewhat elevated it probably is healthy. There is very little mangrove, but another enclosed piece of water to the south of this probably has more. The language of the people here is Swaheli; they trade a little in gum-copal and Orchilla weed.
After the American come the German, then come the French and English. They arrive loaded with American sheeting, brandy, gunpowder, muskets, beads, English cottons, brass-wire, china-ware, and other notions, and depart with ivory, gum-copal, cloves, hides, cowries, sesamum, pepper, and cocoa-nut oil.
The bark of the tree is of a light ash colour; the gum was oozing from the bark at wounded places, and it drops on the ground from branches; it is thus that insects are probably imbedded in the gum-copal. The people dig in the vicinity of modern trees in the belief that the more ancient trees which dropped their gum before it became an article of commerce must have stood there.
During this march we crossed three deep nullahs which drain the Uzaramo plateau, and arrived at the Makutaniro, or junction of this line with those of Mboamaji and Konduchi, which traverse central Uzaramo, and which, on my former return journey, I went down. The gum-copal diggings here cease.
The birds were singing merrily too, inspired by the cold, which was 47°, and by the vicinity of some population. Gum-copal trees and bushes grow here as well as all over the country; but gum is never dug for, probably because the trees were never large enough to yield the fossil gum. Marks of smiths are very abundant and some furnaces are still standing.
The black traders come from Tette to this country to buy slaves, and as a consequence here we come to bugs again, which we left when we passed the Arab slave-traders' beat. 31st October, 1866. We proceed westwards, and a little south through a country covered with forest trees, thickly planted, but small, generally of bark-cloth and gum-copal trees, masukos, rhododendrons, and a few acacias.
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